Another Jones & Shipman 540P Surface grinder post

[Pawcu]

After this was done, I then gave it another clean with degreaser to remove any loose rust as well as trying to clean those areas which I had missed when pressure washing it. There are definitely areas behind baffles which I cannot reach - I guess the ideal way would be an acid bath but I don't know of any one who offers such services here in Malta.
Once this was done I dried it up with some old cloths and gave it a coat of rust converter.
Decided to use the spray gun but once again the bottom compartments were the hardest as the gun is too big to go in. I tried various spray patterns and combinations. In the end a long brush worked best:

This was yesterday. Today I went down to see how it has dried up and I was greeted by this:

Not sure if I did something wrong but I am under the impression that the rust convertor is to convert and stop further rusting not make it worse
Before I do any drastic measurements and grind it all down again, I got a section and wiped on a different brand of rust convertor I have (I used up all the other one I have anyways). Will see how this fairs tomorrow.

In case anyone is wondering about the holes in the compartments, I added those to be able to drain each compartment individually. Since I wont be using this all the time, I plan to drain the coolant tank so I don't leave it full of coolant and have it rust on me again as quickly. Not sure if this plan will work or if I find it too much of a hassle and leave it filled in all the time. Back looks like swiss cheese:

That's it for now - I finally caught up to the progress I have made. Apologies for not keeping up every week but writing these updates takes time - more than I would like to admit

 

[Pawcu]

This morning I went and gave it a second coat of rust convertor. Although it's a bit better, there are still some areas where it's starting to form surface rust again after the 2nd coat:

Some areas are a bit better:

I gave the worse areas another coat - this will be the final one. Will wipe it down and potentially use a manual wire brush before I start painting with red oxide primer.

In the meantime, I also 'welded' on some stainless steel nuts for the mounting plate of the pump - once again, not a lot of room to angle the torch properly and since this is on the underside, I couldn't see well:

Couldn't even get the camera to focus... so you can imagine how good the welding is

Hopefully they will hold just enough. If the time comes for me to remove it again, and the weld breaks off, I think I'll just get rid of the coolant tank all together at that point

 

[awemawson]

I am impressed with the care you are taking with this re-build. It brings back memories of about 20 year ago when I did mine, with the same horrors in the coolant tank.

I may have mentioned this before, but the vanes of my pump had been completely worn away by entrained abrasive.

If you use the right water based coolant it should have sufficient anti-corrosive additives stop further rusting

 

[Pawcu]

I am impressed with the care you are taking with this re-build. It brings back memories of about 20 year ago when I did mine, with the same horrors in the coolant tank.

I may have mentioned this before, but the vanes of my pump had been completely worn away by entrained abrasive.

If you use the right water based coolant it should have sufficient anti-corrosive additives stop further rusting

Thanks for you words... Not going to lie looking at the state of this, it makes me wonder if this is worth the effort but I want to restore it since it's the original.
Regarding coolant, it's good that you brought it up, what coolant do you suggest using? Considering that I won't be using it a lot?

 

[awemawson]

This is the coolant that I use - chosen as it is universal so I run it in my cylindrical grinder, my horizontal grinder, my CNC mill , my manual mill, and manual and cnc lathes. One size fits all !

 

[Pawcu]

This is the coolant that I use - chosen as it is universal so I run it in my cylindrical grinder, my horizontal grinder, my CNC mill , my manual mill, and manual and cnc lathes. One size fits all !

View attachment 485358

Thanks! I'm assuming you still wipe the machines after use to avoid surface rust? And did you have any issues with mould or the coolant going bad?
Thanks once again

 

[awemawson]

Not had any go bad yet! Enclosed machines I wash down with a hose (*) with a trigger gun that I've rigged up to the coolant pump and yes the manual machines get a wipe down with a rag and undiluted coolant ocassionaly.

(* This is good for clearing chips / swarf etc)

 

[Pawcu]

Good to know ok thanks ill see if I can source some of this locally. My friend told me to use deionised water but that will still cause surface rust

 

[Pawcu]

Another week, some more progress has been made albeit not so much. Basically spent most weekday mornings slowly painting the insides of the tank baffles trying not to paint my arm in the process (only had around 30-45 mins each time) - definitely not the nicest of paint jobs - surface is all pitted and got a lot of paint runs as I couldn't see properly all the time so I opted for the dunking the paint brush in paint and smear it all over approach in the hope that I hit all the areas. Some pics of the progress:

Bottom areas were the worst:

Flipped it over on it's back to try and get better access and painted the bottom as well in the process:

Yesterday I had a full day and got around to painting the rest of the insides (using a long angled paint brush helped) and the outside(used a roller for this):

 

[Pawcu]

I then turned my attention to the rest of the parts. Used a grinder with a wire wheel to remove the remaining gun that I hadn't removed with the pressure washer - which was a lot. I hadn't spent a lot of time cleaning these as most of the time I spent it on the tank itself. Noticed that the lid had a couple of pin holes in it as well... which kind of explains why the motor area was so rusty - I believe some of the water was dripping near the area of where it sits and thus caused it to rust.

As before - drilled the holes and welded them up:

I decided I had had enough with the paint brush and roller and decided to break out the spray gun for the rest of the items. Worked pretty well but the cleaning at the end really ends up taking a bit of time:

They're definitely not perfect - paint didn't flow as easily (I think I should have used a bit more thinner) but they turned out well in the end.
I don't have large tarps so I ended up using old cardboard boxes from left over projects (hence the paint already on them) to cover up the important bits of the lathe and the mill (had the extractor running as well):

I'll give this ample time to dry properly. On the inside I was thinking of painting it with some sort of marine paint as I would hope this would be a bit more durable. The outside I will use the gun metal blue that I have used for the other parts I have painted on this surface grinder.
I was contemplating hot dip galvanising it - but this was after I had started painting it. Either way I would have had to sand blast it and that wouldn't have been cheap. Moreover, the galvanising process would have messed up the threaded holes and nuts (which granted I could have potentially re-tapped afterwards but I heard that the zinc normally gums up the threads pretty quickly and it's very easy to break a tap while doing so). Moreover, when I talked to the guy at the galvanising business he informed me that I would need to put vent holes in the far end of the tank so that the air could escape when they were being dipped and I wasn't sure if the holes I already had would have been enough. I guess I could have just drilled more holes and then welded them up afterwards but to be honest I was really in a hurry to continue working on this and didn't want to wait. In addition, to get a quote for the sandblasting I would have had to take it over as he didn't feel like giving me a quote or at least a minimum amount even when I provided him with pictures. I didn't feel like the hassle just to get a quote which would most probably be more expensive than I would have been willing to spend so decided to crack on. Time will tell if this was a wise decision or not. There are areas inside where I couldn't reach as they are behind baffles so those have been left as is... will see.

 

[Pawcu]

Not a lot of progress has been made this week but I did finish painting/spraying all the parts. Both @Smouser and a friend of mine recommended Jotun paints so I reached out to a local importer for paint suggestions and a quote. I specified that I have already painted a base coat with Hempel Danrex Red Oxide in case that affects. They recommended Jotun 2-pack Epoxy Penguard Primer HB White but they did suggest I sand and remove as much of the red oxide before applying the Jotun paint to reduce any adverse affects the Epoxy paint might have on the red oxide. I did some further research and yeah it turns out, you should not use an epoxy paint over an alkyd paint - even if the epoxy doesn't cause any wrinkling, it would be a waste as the strength of the epoxy would be based on how strong the primer coat is.
Unfortunately that is not something I was willing to do - as mentioned in my previous post, I would have to sand blast it and if I was going down that route, I might as well have galvanised it then. That being said, I will definitely keep the primer they suggested in mind for any future projects.
I decided to get some marine paint from the hardware store. They suggested a Bianca paint (I got the white gloss). It worked Ok-ish but I did get some wrinkling in some areas where I think the red oxide hadn't fully cured because it seems to have pooled a bit from some areas I couldn't reach properly so I had resorted to just dumping as much paint on the brush as possible and hope for the best

I went for white so hopefully it would be a bit easier to see when I need to clean. In hind sight I should have gone for a slight darker color as it would have been easier to cover the red oxide. I might give it another coat when it dries or at least the areas where it seems like it didn't cover enough.

Yesterday I also managed to get the outside and the bottom trolley sprayed in GunMetal blue as well:

In person it's a bit darker than it shows in the pictures.

Will leave them to dry for a couple of days and then get to assembling. The remaining fittings and metering units for the automatic oiling also arrived yesterday so I can finally sort that out as well

 

[Pawcu]

Bit of a smaller update this week.
I got the coolant tank all assembled with all the fittings.

Pump motor installed:

All the drain fittings installed - still need to leak test them:

I designed and 3D printed the connectors myself
Ended up scratching a bit the paint during assembly But I guess it was never going to remain all pretty for ever.

I also created a quick bracket for the coolant nozzle as I didn't seem to have anything with the machine. Not sure how it was mounted previously to be perfectly honest as I had to drill and tap the holes as well:

All installed:

I also got the remaining oiling points installed and hooked up:

This is how the machine currently stands:

Technically it's finished however there are a few remaining bits and pieces that I need to do before I can say it's properly finished.
I already purchased some deionised water to fill up the coolant tank so will need to do that and leak test all the fittings I added. After that I would also like to add an extra guard at the back of the table as currently it's pretty open and I envision a lot of coolant and dust to fall behind the table. I've already started dressing up the wheel and noticed that even with the extractor running, some grinding dust still manages to escape and stick to all the surfaces, so the guard will be helpful.
Moreover I also realised that the chuck that I have is on the limits of the travel of the machine... in fact using the automatic hydraulic travel I cannot reach all the edges and would need to wind it manually further. I spoke to my friend and he told me it makes more sense to mill 0.5mm off the edges (in fact the front and back of the chuck already have a 1cm shallow slot milled which I think was for this purpose as well). This way I can make sure that if I have an overhanging part it will still be flat. I will need to get it trammed in on the mill and give it a shot. Was also contemplating using a facemill or fly cutter to clean up the face but there are some grooves which are quite deep so I would need to remove a lot of material. As of now I will most probably just mill the edges as mentioned and then grind the surface flat using the grinder itself... but that will be an update for another week Thank you all for reading

 

[awemawson]

Bit of a smaller update this week.
I got the coolant tank all assembled with all the fittings.

Pump motor installed:
View attachment 487995

All the drain fittings installed - still need to leak test them:
View attachment 487996
I designed and 3D printed the connectors myself
Ended up scratching a bit the paint during assembly But I guess it was never going to remain all pretty for ever.

I also created a quick bracket for the coolant nozzle as I didn't seem to have anything with the machine. Not sure how it was mounted previously to be perfectly honest as I had to drill and tap the holes as well:
View attachment 487997

All installed:
View attachment 487998

I also got the remaining oiling points installed and hooked up:
View attachment 487999 View attachment 488000
View attachment 488001
View attachment 488002

This is how the machine currently stands:
View attachment 488003

Technically it's finished however there are a few remaining bits and pieces that I need to do before I can say it's properly finished.
I already purchased some deionised water to fill up the coolant tank so will need to do that and leak test all the fittings I added. After that I would also like to add an extra guard at the back of the table as currently it's pretty open and I envision a lot of coolant and dust to fall behind the table. I've already started dressing up the wheel and noticed that even with the extractor running, some grinding dust still manages to escape and stick to all the surfaces, so the guard will be helpful.
Moreover I also realised that the chuck that I have is on the limits of the travel of the machine... in fact using the automatic hydraulic travel I cannot reach all the edges and would need to wind it manually further. I spoke to my friend and he told me it makes more sense to mill 0.5mm off the edges (in fact the front and back of the chuck already have a 1cm shallow slot milled which I think was for this purpose as well). This way I can make sure that if I have an overhanging part it will still be flat. I will need to get it trammed in on the mill and give it a shot. Was also contemplating using a facemill or fly cutter to clean up the face but there are some grooves which are quite deep so I would need to remove a lot of material. As of now I will most probably just mill the edges as mentioned and then grind the surface flat using the grinder itself... but that will be an update for another week Thank you all for reading

That coolant tank is looking excellent - well done. I'm afraid when I did mine all those years ago, after I'd cleaned out the gooey mess I cheated and I had it shot blasted inside and outside and sprayed in two pack epoxy. Still looking pretty fair.

 

[Pawcu]

That coolant tank is looking excellent - well done. I'm afraid when I did mine all those years ago, after I'd cleaned out the gooey mess I cheated and I had it shot blasted inside and outside and sprayed in two pack epoxy. Still looking pretty fair.

Thanks for your kind words
I think to be fair your approach was the wisest choice xD As mentioned previously I was already too invested into the 'manual' clean-up and the primer paint. Next time (if there is a next time) I will definitely sand blast it and use a 2 pack epoxy for extra durability.

 

[Smouser]

That SG and accessories looks awesome!

You did a really good job getting it back to its former glory.

I think your biggest problem is now going to be finding enough stuff to grind with it

 

[Pawcu]

That SG and accessories looks awesome!

You did a really good job getting it back to its former glory.

I think your biggest problem is now going to be finding enough stuff to grind with it

Thank you

Yes - I really don't want it to just become a show piece haha xD
But at least it was 'fun' restoring it xD

 

[Pawcu]

So a couple of weekends ago I started on getting the magnetic chuck ground in. Because I wanted to use coolant, I first got a quick splashback fabricated using some 1mm sheet steel and a rubber strip on the top:

As mentioned in my previous post, the magnetic chuck seems to be a bit larger than the actual working area of the surface grinder so I milled 2 0.5mm slots (on each end) so that I don't get any unground (is that word?) high-spots.

This was the state of the chuck before grinding (with the slots milled):

As you can see there is quite a bit of surface rust and grooves from the previous owner. I would also like to mention that this was my first time running a Surface Grinder so maybe it was not the wisest choice to start from the magnetic chuck
For coolant at the moment I am running on just de-ionised water (want to get my hands on the Rocol V-Cut SS but there are no distributors here unfortunately).
I started by first dressing the wheel (unfortunately I don't have a balancing jig/arbor yet so I had to skip from doing that).
Once the wheel was 'sufficiently dressed', and armed with my safety goggles on and my bum hole puckered, I started slowly lowering the head till I started seeing some sparks.
I took very light cuts to minimize heat and to prevent any catastrophic events. It started off pretty well, however after an hour or so, I started noticing that I wasn't getting consistent cuts (at times it started bogging down even though I had passed the area before and it cut just fine) and I also started hearing some harmonic noises... checked the table ways and they were dry!
I quickly grabbed a can of 32 oil (same as I have in the tank) and started squirting as much oil as I can on the ways - this lubed up the ways enough and after a while the harmonic stopped.
I decided to stop there for day - this was the end result:

As you can see the surface finish is far from ideal. Moreover, I had ground the chuck with it 'OFF'. Accordingly to my friend, ideally I grind it while it's on since it might raise the middle rectangular pieces slightly.
Either way I was going to have to dismantle the table again to check why I was not getting enough oil on the ways...
I first tried to remove the table with the chuck still bolted to it, but unfortunately my wife and I couldn't manage to lift it up safely... so off came the chuck and then the table. The coolant tank in the middle definitely didn't help the situation.
Really didn't think I would end up seeing this sight again so soon:

I ran the machine and even after waiting for around 5 minutes, no oil was coming out
When I had dismantled the valve block from the saddle, I had noticed that the oil for the ways comes through a very tiny groove and orifice and I was worried that when I put the new gasket and shellac, some might have squeezed out and blocked the passage. Now I had tested this (as per my previous posts show) and I could confirm that oil was definitely coming out so it was not blocked then. However, before mounting the table, I had tested it again and noticed that the flow had decreased but was still coming out, so I decided to take a chance and see if that will work. In fact I made sure multiple times that the ways were constantly 'damp' from the oil when I was testing the machine.
Something however must have blocked it now... maybe a loose piece of dirt got caught up and clogged it.
I was really dreading having to take off the saddle, remove the valve block, clean everything, make new gaskets etc... Moreover, because of the weight of the saddle, I would have to constantly ask my friends for help to remove and mount it (I don't have a gantry/hoist) and last time I asked my wife for help, we barely managed to put it into place.
I started by blasting air through the lube holes (and splashing the ceiling with oil) but I didn't have high hopes that this would work - spoiler alert it didn't solve the issue.
The other solution was to bypass the original passage and create my own piping for lubing the ways. As I was inspecting the saddle to see where best to drill the hole and how to drill it, I noticed this bolt on the back:

It perfectly aligns with the oiling points on the ways and confirmed that the depth of the bolt is the same depth of the holes on the ways - I removed the bolt and blasted air through it - success At least something was working in my favour.
With that part sorted I need to see how I was going to get oil up there. The obvious solution was to pickup the oil from the output of the gear pump - quick trip to a couple of hydraulic shops and I got these fittings:

I removed the tapered fitting from the gear pump (as I had never managed to find a replacement that actually mates with the female part) and luckily the male threads were actually something common that the hydraulic shop had (I believe it was 3/8 bsp?). While I was at it, I also got an oil pressure gauge to make sure that the pump was working within the 120PSI limits that it's stated on the manual. I also got a flow regulator so I could limit the flow of the oil that goes to the ways.
By some miracle I got everything assembled and fit inside - albeit I will have to dismantle some of it if I ever get to take the tank out as the whole setup sticks past the opening:

 

[Pawcu]

Continued:

I should have used a 90Deg fitting there but i had already assembled that piece while it was outside and I didn't want to dismantle half of it again to replace it - I should have left enough length for the pipe so it doesn't kink.

On the top at the saddle I installed another 90Deg fitting:

Did a quick test and success oil started coming out again

It's not very visible but the flat part also has oil just doesn't show well on camera. I actually had to almost turn off the regulator as even with the slightest turn, the flow was quite a bit more than the original.
I put the table back on and I confirmed that oil was 'dripping' from the saddle ways now and it was.
I also adjusted the working pressure of the pump as previously it was only around 90psi, so I bumped it up to around a 100:

With all of this sorted I decided to give the chuck another go - this time with it turned on as my friend had suggested.
I redressed the wheel and off we went - this time made sure to use lighter cuts (1 or 2 notches on the wheel - I still need to figure out what each notch increment is - a DRO will definitely help). Once I made sure that the chuck was flat, I redressed the wheel again and gave it 1 more cut and let if spark out 4 or 5 times (not sure if that is what the correct term is - basically i gave it 4 or 5 passes without lowering the head).
This was the result - it's still not perfect and I cannot get rid of the middle groove unless I really remove a lot of material which I don't want to do:

I gave it a liberal coating of GT85 (so it doesn't rust) and I tried the mirror hovering finger test:

I tried it with a 0.001mm indicator and there is less than 0.001m deflect when going front to back and side to side. However the needle does jump around 0.02mm when changing direction from left to right - this is with the oil running but hadn't warmed up fully yet so most probably that will have an impact. To be completely honest those values seem far too good to be true but either way I'm calling this done for now.... hopefully won't give me any more drama any time soon ... hope I didn't jinx it just there

 

[jmp49]

If you have any imbalance in the mounted stone it can cause small marks as the heavy spot rotates round, but you can remove these mostly by sparking out each pass as you have already done. The grade of the stone and how friable it is also affects things of course.

I built up a temporary wheel balancer using my flat surface plate, and some steel blocks ground to the same height, then on top of the blocks I put some vee blocks, and in the vee's I sat square precision rails side on so the top was a knife edge. I then made a spindle up to mount the wheels on, ground it concentric in the surface grinder using a sinus table and centres stuck to the mag chuck and span it with a cordless drill and a rubber band, and then did all my wheels at the time.
I've been meaning to get a balancer thats more permanent, but I've been assembling those parts each time I get a new wheel for 10 years now as people seem to ask so much for grinding wheel balancers secondhand. I thought I had photos somewhere, but I'll have to do some archeology to find them now.

Is it a bad time to mention what transformed my grinder for me was fitting a digital read out? its a old imperial machine, and I had sharpie writing on each dial to translate to metric as I mostly work in metric, but it was still possible to mess up easily.
With a digital read out, true the wheel, touch it off once, and zero the z, then you can work relative to that, finessing how much to take off each pass, you can go back to the diamond dresser, and see how much you dress off on the dro and alter the offset with the keypad. All possible with just dials though of course, just makes it easier when Im brain tired.
Whats also interesting is my machine has no way to measure the X travel, only Z&Y, but I put a scale on the X and now I can sneak up on a spot to stop at.

Finally, really nice results & really good your treating it with respect, I think the surface grinder has to be one of the most dangerous machines in a workshop because its all so calm and smooth when everything is working well that people get complacent, until something goes wrong.

 

[jmp49]

Archeology complete.
Balancer frame, bad memory, I set it up on a box support on the plate, then added the precision rails on edge as described, and then used a machinists level to check both rails were accurately horizontal.

Wheel spindle arbour grinding, I did this because when I turned it, it still showed a tiny imbalance, but I finish ground it to size, and the imbalance went away. I think getting it accurate mattered for this task.


And in use, the sharpie marks are so that I can repeat the test of where the wheel stops with consistency, it goes the first time you dress the wheel after.



Might give you some ideas. It worked really well.

This is from my machine before (left block) and after balancing the wheel (right block) for the first time. The spindle bearings were bad too when I was doing this, so its not as nice a finish as yours, but you can see the bounce marks from the out of balance wheel on the left block, and the right block doesnt have as near as bad a texturing. Holes are 6mm for perspective.