Round column mill mods

[P EdgParticipant @pedg]

1. Just wondered if anyone else has a similar modification on their mill (maybe from an old article in ME)? A pawl engages on a toothed wheel on the quill feed, each ‘click’ is approx .005” Z axis travel. It’s disengaged by removing a ‘U’ shaped spacer on the end of the pin/bolt top centre of photo. Also, a lever and cam system replaces the two pinch bolts for the column height adjustment. Purchased at a bereavement sale many years ago so I was unable to ask the previous owner about it.

[DiogenesParticipant @diogenes]

Interesting to see – the ‘5 thou quill feed’ was probably a useful mod. in the days before DRO, but clearly required some dedication in the manufacture..

..tend to forget, nowadays, how widespread & popular these machines once were..

[VicParticipant @vic]

It’s a shame the Chinese didn’t copy the early Korean ones that came over here in the 1970’s and 80’s. They were much better machines. I’ve also seen some nice “German” round column mills but I’m not sure whether they were built there or imported.

[old martParticipant @oldmart]

We have a Taiwanese one at the museum, more accurate than the Tom Senior. A variation of  the quick head locking for both bolts at once that I have not seen before. There have been many different designs for sycronising the locking which turn up regularly on the forums over the pond, even chain and sprockets have been used. The fine feed for the quill may have been added for a particular job, I rely on the added DRO for our mill as the worm wheel has variable backlash as it does not run as straight as it should, so the Taiwanese did not get it exactly right.

[P EdgParticipant @pedg]

Thanks all for the replies. Sounds like the quill feed ‘design’ was possibly just an idea of a previous owner then. Agreed a cheap DRO is the way to go these days. Personally, I like this machines robustness and simplicity (no eventually-obsolete drive boards etc to worry about) and the limited Z movement of the round column design hasn’t been a problem for me if you plan ahead.

[DiogenesParticipant @diogenes]

..If necessity is the mother of invention, a well-furnished scrapbox is the often the nuptual bed..

[P Edg]

On P Edg Said:

Personally, I like this machines robustness and simplicity (no eventually-obsolete drive boards etc to worry about) and the limited Z movement of the round column design hasn’t been a problem for me if you plan ahead.

This was my thinking years ago. A friend had a variable speed mill and got through about four circuit boards in just over a year.

I ended up increasing my budget to get a small Knee Mill though.

[VicParticipant @vic]

This was the mill I had in mind. One came up for sale used many years ago for a good price. Sadly too far away for me.

”However, they also made at least one proper, complete and very effective bench-top vertical milling/drilling machine, the Type BST-23.  Weighing some 342 kg, the Ixion milling and drilling was very heavily built and modelled along lines established by Taiwanese and Korean makers – whose inexpensive and now ubiquitous Mill/Drills began to appear on the market in the early 1970s.”

 

https://www.lathes.co.uk/ixion/

A nice looking machine.

 

This was the critical feature the Chinese didn’t copy for some reason.

 

 

 

[southernchapParticipant @southernchap]

Ah, so with the Ixon, the head and column are, in normal use, kept clamped together, the rack is fixed to the column, and the column moves up and down (downwards into the base).

That’s different.

[southernchap]

On southernchap Said:

Ah, so with the Ixon, the head and column are, in normal use, kept clamped together, the rack is fixed to the column, and the column moves up and down (downwards into the base).

That’s different.

I believe this is the way the Korean mills operated as well.

[VicParticipant @vic]

Here’s the Korean one. Yes, Naerok is Korean spelled backwards …

https://www.lathes.co.uk/naerok-mill-drill/

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