Chester Super Lux / RF45 Clone Modifications Part-2

[Taf_PembsParticipant @taf_pembs]

Good morning all !

With the whole thing now painted (other than the bonding surfaces obviously!), skimmed over with a very coarse grinding wheel to better key the bonding areas and thoroughly cleaned it is time for final fit.

Once fitted I torqued all the bolts up to a pretty low torque of 10Nm just to make sure they were all the same.

I then set to injecting the epoxy.. not as messy as I was expecting but none the less it still get to places you haven’t even been near as is usual for anything like this stuff !

Once I’d injected an area I broke out the ‘rattler’ 😁 The remains of a SDS socket boring tool turned down to a plunger type thing, bit of gafa tape over the end to prevent scratching and run in the SDS drill on hammer only. it will vibrate pretty much anything like this and certainly helped to get the epoxy to spread nicely.

The holes were then just plugged up with those pre made flat pack furniture building wooden dowels .. well they fitted with a small tickle from a hammer and we’ve all got plenty lying about !

Once everywhere was full to over flowing and well rattled it was time to leave for at least 24 hours but I ended up leaving it several days.

 

[Taf_PembsParticipant @taf_pembs]

Good morning all..!

Not much more to go ..😁

After a few days I was back to the thing, plenty of time for the epoxy to fully cure it was time to finish off.

As with all those self mixing epoxy things, where they mix in the injection tube, the first inch or so is squeezed into the bin or onto a piece of carboard as I did to make sure that what is coming out is even and mixed. I attacked this waste bit with al sorts of tools, screw drivers, spikes and eventually getting all neanderthal on it with a hammer and it still didn’t want to brake up! Dam that is touch stuff and the bit I squeezed out onto a small piece of waste steel plate point blank refused to come off until I got seriously aggressive with it with a decent hammer but it still left some bits on there!

I was pretty happy with the stuff to say the least, seemingly much tougher than the polyester and vinylester resins based on my hammer antics.

First job was to torque up all the bolts before touching the column mounts. I backed them all off to make sure the lube on them had prevented them from bonding, amazingly had a 100% success rate! then nip them back and torqued them all to 40Nm.

Then set up an indicator in the spindle to check the head nod, as I presumed that all this messing about would have moved things. With the column gib nipped to the marked position so it was same as before, using a slip gauge under the point of the indicator there was a very slight change in the reading, the column needed to tilt forward a fraction.

This was easy enough as I had also put M6 jacking bolts into the column mounts so a simple matter of tweak them and recheck –

Back and fore with this a few times, tightening the main fixing bolts to 10NM each time and eventually it was back to bob on.

I left it like that for a few days as we were going to a log cabin with a hot tub in the Forest of Dean for a short break. Sitting in a hot tub with a beer (or several) surrounded by trees and wildlife did the back the world of good.. lovely.!

🍻

[Taf_PembsParticipant @taf_pembs]

I left the indicator in the mill while we were away so all I had to do was slide the slip gauge under it to re check the head not / column tilt. I expected some measurable difference, but to my surprise it was exactly the same at the front and rear of the table.. that’ll do!

Time to inject the top 2 mounting sections to the column. Same procedure although I didn’t use the SDS hammer to vibrate the thing, just some tapping to help the stuff settle.

(some of my welds are really terrible! mostly vertical welding.. must get back to doing more)

Wait a few days for full cure then torque the bolts up to 40Nm and re check – indicator still left in spindle so a simply slide the slip gauge under to re check.

Believe it or not, just over 0.00 front to back! there was a visible difference in the needle of the indicator but it was only about the width of the needle how ever much that is, I wasn’t bothered enough to get the 10ths indicator out.

Plenty good enough, it will move more than that with temperature change!

Next job was to remount the control box and the junction box for the column motor / limit stops etc.

I wanted to mount the control box on the column rather than the head, partly to save nearly 8KG from hanging on the head but also give better visibility & light around the work and just to keep it out of the way. The only issue would be the need to lengthen the wires to the motor and a longer conduit – easy job so no bother there.

Time to dig out all the saved bits of scrap to make a mount (I throw nothing away!) .. a few bits of flat bar, some bits of small angle iron and some still poor welding later and I had this –

As well as 4 little angle brackets to mount the rear junction box to the back of the column brace. not bad for the scrap bin.

🍻

[Taf_PembsParticipant @taf_pembs]

Good morning again..!

Well that’s it just about finished …. again!

I mounted the control box to the column and to be honest I much prefer it there, yes it’s a little further back but it just feels better being a little out of the way yet still with very easy access. I did have to shorten the column gib lock handles though, the previous owner made quite long T handles for easy access behind the control box which was great.

Next job was to paint it all …. again … and refit the oiler manifolds, pump and pipework which other than 2 new tapped m6 holes in the side of the brace was the same as before.

Anyway, here is the (almost) finished product –

I say almost as I still haven’t fitted the DRO!

I’m quite chuffed that despite all the messing about with it, it doesn’t look that different to before.

I suppose the question is did it make any difference?

The problem is I didn’t take a video of the movement before so unfortunately you will just have to take my word for it as to how much movement there was, sorry!

I had to wait for a mate to come down my neck of the woods  again before I could get a video but here it is.

https://youtu.be/dcUscyJs2iU

With said mate (yes, I do have 1!) giving a fair push on the top of the motor so as far up as possible for best leverage the movement is down to 0.01mm. I’m sure with some more OOomph we could get it a little more but I would say that is plenty successful enough and I’m well chuffed !!

The real proof is in the cutting though and I had actually done a fair bit of that before being able to take the measuring video.

Re mount the 50mm 5 flute shell mill and give it some work to do on some mild steel as before. What a difference!! A 0.5mm depth of cut at 540rpm (Seemed to be it’s happiest speed but maybe 300 ish would be better) on a 45mm wide piece of steel so almost full cutter width, it ran no bother at all, no crazy noises from the top end (I swear some of it was the centrifugal switch rattling in the motor as well as gear chatter!), no sparks just decent cutting with a reasonably quick feed rate (Not sure what as I didn’t time handle turns / min).

I’m pretty sure it could do a deeper cut but I wouldn’t like to run that on a full width cut, lets not be too cruel to it just yet.

I will try to get a video of it cutting but it will look perfectly normal. I think somewhere I took a video of running the cutter at full speed (with plenty of sparks as it was slightly harder steel than EN1 but was the only way I could run it to get a cut) but not it running at a sensible speed with the resulting noise and surface finish etc as I never wanted to run it long enough to do that, the noise was horrific!

🍻

[Taf_PembsParticipant @taf_pembs]

So was it worth it…?

For me, all of this has been something of a teaching / learning experience the scraping etc and the challenge – can it be done??

Going to this extent to try to increase it’s rigidity and reduce the things movement is just utterly daft – DONT DO IT..! 😁 Get something that is far better designed if you can but they are very appealing to people who simply don’t have room for a bridgeport or the like but want something with the table size and axis movement of these type of mills.

I only had to add a coupe of bits of steel to an order to get what was needed, A mate had some surplus epoxy left over form a construction job so donated that to me (the pure epoxy isn’t that cheap, around 30 quid a tube I believe), I have done all this to keep myself sane while waiting on NHS to get fixed but now half of me seems to have been sorted well enough I expect I’ll be getting back to normality soon, getting a job that doesn’t need a right hand till they fix that 🤞😁

I’ve enjoyed almost all of it, learnt a lot and had some great help form some great folk on here – THANK YOU SO MUCH!

I’ll try and sort some video of before and after (if I can find any before) and a pic when the DRO finally gets fitted.

Cheers all for now, take care 🍻

Taff

[AStroudParticipant @astroud]

Glad you had success and thanks for the great write ups.

Andrew

[David George 1Participant @davidgeorge1]

Nice job it just took a while to do but now you have a machine where you can make pieces which you can rely on to be square and flat. Congratulations!

David

[Taf_PembsParticipant @taf_pembs]

Cheers folks, appreciate the comments 👍🍻

I’ll get some pics of the DRO install when I get back to doing stuff in the workshop and get it fitted!

And some video of it taking reasonable cuts wit the shell mill.

Cheers!

[Dave SParticipant @daves59043]

Beautiful work.
Dave

[Alan JacksonParticipant @alanjackson47790]

Brilliant work Taf, Plus a good interesting write up. Now two things are fixed the mill and your back. Things are on the up.

Alan

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