Victoria HO Mill – INT 30 or 40?

[IanTParticipant @iant]

Confusion as to measurement of spindle

[IanTParticipant @iant]

I have an elderly Victoria Mark 1 ‘H0’ horizontal milling machine, the details of which can be found on the excellent lathes.co.uk website if anyone is interested – here: http://www.lathes.co.uk/victoria/page2.html

I also have a full set of ER32 collets and various chucks to fit my Myford, Lorch and EW lathes – so decided a nice suggestion to Santa for my Xmas stocking might be an INT/ER32 chuck for Vicky. This would then give me something that looked rather like a very robust ‘lathe’ headstock with ER32 capability working on a very large powered vertical slide! Sounded useful.

Now for some reason I’d always assumed the spindle nose on the HO was a No 30 INT – but the ‘Lathes’ site states it to be No 40. For reasons I won’t bore you with, I am unable to get down the ‘Shed’ at the moment to measure the mill directly, but instead dispatched one of my ‘off-spring’ to bring the horizontal arbor up to be measured. Referring to Machinery’s handbook the key dimension seemed to be ‘A’ (Gage diameter of flange).

 

This gives INT30 as 1¼” and INT40 as 1¾”. Seemed simple enough until I measured what I took to be the same dimension on the arbor (directly behind the flange) which was 1.375” (1.3/8th). So I seem to have an INT35 spindle taper?

Well, probably not, but I’m clearly missing something here. Can anyone help me please?

By the way, on the subject of milling machines generally and the questions about what to buy?

The main advice seemed to be to go for mass and rigidity etc. The Victoria probably weighs a ton or more and is built like the proverbial brick outhouse. They simply do not make machines like this anymore and whilst it is limited in some ways (spindle speeds for instance) it has a large powered table and doesn’t flinch at cuts that I suspect would cripple most small modern machines. It cost me a few hundred pounds to buy, plus the hire of a twin-axle trailer for the day and the loan of a 2-ton engine hoist (plus a friend’s much needed muscle). If you have room for an older machine, they can be the basis for much improvement and may well suit those who have more time than money to spare.

 

Regards,

 

IanT

[Charles PParticipant @charlesp60333]

I’ve had the early Victoria flat belt plain version (oddly labelled “MO” not “HO”) and the later Elliott badged UO and think that they can be great value in a smallish footprint. Both machines had INT40 horizontal spindles but I’ve had vertical heads with INT30 and INT 40. I severely doubt that you’ve been unlucky enough to buy a machine with an INT35.

Incidentally the machine was improved by grafting a Bridgeport head onto the overarm.

 

Charles

[IanTParticipant @iant]

Thanks Charles.

 

Yes, mine has a flat belt final drive, although the main motor drive to the flat belt is a twin chain arrangment, with a secondary single chain drive to the powered table.

 

So I guess my question is that – if you measure one of your INT 40 fittings – what is the diameter of the taper immediately behind the drive flange (e.g the flange with two slots in it)? From Machinery’s Handbook – I expected this to be 1.3/4″ but it isn’t on my arbor. So am I missing something here?

 

I have the original Victoria vertical head attachment (which fits directly to the vertical slides via a bolt on fixture) but the helical gears have been grunged sometime in the past. This is a very solid bit of kit – I can just about lift it with two hands – and the mounting plate kit is about the same weight.

 

So I may well strip out the stripped gears and arrange a direct external v-belt drive – possibly with a 3-phase motor and speed control. The basics are there – and as I said, you have a very robust starting point to work from…

 

Regards,

 

IanT

[RICHARD GREEN 2Participant @richardgreen2]

I’ve got a couple of Elliott U2 mills ( same as a Victoria U2 ), they’ve got a 40 INT in the horizontal spindle, a 40 INT in the genuine swivelling vertical head, but only a 30 INT in the genuine double swivelling universal vertical head, I dont find the speed range restrictive at all,they have power feeds all ways, but they could do with rapids in all ways as well, thats a heavy knee and table to have to wind up and down manually if you have to ! but they are good solid mills , have a look at my pictures to see one of mine in action.

 

Richard.

[SkarvenParticipant @skarven]

My 30 INT (or is it ISO 30 or NT 30?) measures (sorry about the mm’s) 31.87mm behind the flange, 18.18mm at the other end. The distance between the two ends of the taper is about 49mm.

 

Inch about 1 1/4″ behind the flange.

[IanTParticipant @iant]

Thanks Skarven,

 

That’s what I would have expected from reading ‘Machinery Handbook’ – 1.1/4″ for INT 30.

 

Mines larger than that – but not 1.3/4″….

 

Regards,

 

IanT

[Anonymous]

I measured a range of my INT40 tooling; they all came out at 1.75″. A value of 1.375″ doesn’t seem to agree with anything? For INT35 the value should be 1.5″.

 

Regards,

 

Andrew

[Charles PParticipant @charlesp60333]

Hmm

 

It would appear that your taper is here on Peter Forbes’ useful pages

http://www.oldengine.org/members/diesel/Tables/Clarkson1.htm

And is listed as “1 3/8 NS”

IIRC it’s also in a wartime BS handbook that is currently Ient to a friend

 

Charles

 

[IanTParticipant @iant]

1 3/8th NS

 

Never heard of it before – but I think that may solve my mystery Charles

 

Thank you very much.

 

Regards,

 

 

IanT.

[john raynhamParticipant @johnraynham96810]

8.5.17 Its me again. .Re IanT. Victoria MK1.15.12.2011. Me ? South Coast.. (apologies) Have aired this before but despite kind responses I still am stuck.even worse. What pays off, persistence. or give up be a looser and move on. Yes I understand the principle of failure is the best teacher but who wants to walk around an airport instead of being on the flight to the Algarve that was booked. This topic (Ians) seems to have died. Was it resolved cos it has not done so for me. i may have contacted Ian but not sure because our filing system across three computers involving 1000s documents went out of hand ten yrs ago.My tapers issue has been going on 10yrs and the latest efforts last week has now cost me £100.00 loss.It all started when someone showed me in his shed some MC tools. Among them was a Adcock No.1 hori mill with a vert unit included. in pieces.i felt sorry for it and wham my problems were suddenly increased by a large margin.(no its not a 1E its 1942). After a while I found top arm was missing.(niitemare). Then,assuming the tapers were NT 30 i bought one and it rattled about so then I tried NT 40 and it went halfway in. Got panicky and went on 100s sites and asked loads people in the game and got either wrong advice or none.Some folks on MEW were very helpful and one person produced a NS tool. One engineer (not MEW) said stuff some packing round the INT 30. Others said i must be clueless as it was a standard taper etc.As the people were light yrs cleverer than me this was a difficult situation.regarding the tapers.I did lots measuring and it seemed to me there was a NT 35 taper listed which was 13/8 large end.But there was none avail.i then found Bt 35 and thought that was a Japanese version of NT with differences like threads and drive dogs etc.For some reason I convinced myself that at least the tapers would fit so bought 11 tools. despite that they seemed very scarce too. I sat here feeling smug and started the plan to create a top arm.But having been nearly dead thro a mystery illness i thought better, I could clean the tools so far bought..Whilst doing so I thought I would do a bit of measuring and shock horror I found a difference of about an 1/8 of an inch on the large end (1.480). compared to required 1.375. Strangely the small end is within required sz. I now think the incl angle of these is 16 degrees and the NS taper needs to be 11 degrees but I have not yet got round to that.So a major blunder this week and now the whole lot looks like scrap.I have got an NS taper somewhere but at moment cannot find it as we have major survival. threats affecting us here.Am wondering about re sizing the wrong devices but have no data to go on re the difficulties.like hardness.

I read recently that in Ayurvedic and other principles that luck is the primary need of the human at and subsequent to birth.IIts been known 3000 yrs and apparently many people tried to suppress the knowledge by force.We looked into the ideas more deeply and from what we have found out it seems like the present society is going wrong.Yes skill pays but I know loads people who are fairly clueless and take risks yet seem to win most of the time.I could, up to now never understand the latter but do know. Of course theres more to it than what we put here but we keep that to our selves (at the moment) Our priority today is,- Was the issue re the Viictoria horiz Mill resolved and if so how.We dont do much comp work (re Eng) so might not be back here for a while.Could anyone who is also struggling to survive contact us as we could be very useful.Thanks all.(anyone want a vintage mill, A load of very nice BT 35 tools..? Etc). Anyone know the quickest non painful way to get us out of this area. Urgent.Has Ian got round the problem ??

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Have you tried the BT tool in the actual spindle yet?

Forget the measuring if you have the items try them out and see how good the fit is on the taper.

The outside flange doesn't matter as it can be adapted. Tapers don't always seat fully in either. The socket (machine spindle) might not be made to the full depth of the specification and the tool might be made a bit over length.

If you think the taper angle is wrong you can check that by putting a little plasticine, blue tak, or something on it and seeing how much it gets squashed.

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