Tos FN22 milling machine (Deckel clone)

[Dcal]

Just ordered some, use for me on mini mill parts, sg's, rifles etc. Looks like it goes a long way.

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Ordered some as well.
Should be a lot quicker than plating or ceramic coating.

I was going to try it out on the lock nut and clamp plate on the Eagle Grinder @Pete. And @Brad93 helped me liberate a few weeks ago. (Thanks lads)

I was thinking of blasting it then maybe polishing it up on the wire wheel before bluing?

Would that work? I think even fine media would leave the surface too rough so would need improving some way.

Now if I ever finished my vapour blaster that would be the tool.

Would this approach work?

 

[Brad93]

Ordered some as well.
Should be a lot quicker than plating or ceramic coating.

I was going to try it out on the lock nut and clamp plate on the Eagle Grinder @Pete. And @Brad93 helped me liberate a few weeks ago. (Thanks lads)

I was thinking of blasting it then maybe polishing it up on the wire wheel before bluing?

Would that work? I think even fine media would leave the surface too rough so would need improving some way.

Now if I ever finished my vapour blaster that would be the tool.

View attachment 429306


Would this approach work?

Probably just the wire wheel will work

 

[Pete.]

Wire wheel and thorough degreasing. Acetone or thinners. It'll come out fine.

 

[Mark Davison]

@pete Where did you buy the Turcite? In the UK?

 

[6ply]

Shims don't strictly need to be steel you could use mylar or I've even seen paper. Come to think of it the slotting head on this machine had black tape on it but I wouldn't recommend that at all.

Hi Pete, this thread is proving very interesting. I have a tapered gib that has reached its limit of adjustment. I may do a quick mod so it can be adjusted in further (quickest option to get me going again) but I'm interested in adding a shim or possibly turcite. Regarding the latter, of which I have no experience, is there a recommended grade? A quick look online suggests it isn't expensive and I already have a surface grinder and compound mag vice should I need to grind the strip down. My biggest obstacle to getting anything done at present is a lack of workshop time.

 

[Pete.]

Looks like your gib is also oiled via a through-hole and the wear is obvious but also quite even by the looks of it. You can fix a 10 thou shim to it but be sure that the shim has a hole for the oil and that it lines up.

Another option could be to extend the fat end of the gib then grind it. One of mine has been repaired like that by silver soldering an end on and whomever did it made a nice job of it.

 

[minimutly]

First question, is it flat?
The good thing about shim steel is you can buy it in varying thicknesses to suit what you need. I've never scraped turcite so can't help, but would be interested to see it done.

 

[6ply]

Looks like your gib is also oiled via a through-hole and the wear is obvious but also quite even by the looks of it. You can fix a 10 thou shim to it but be sure that the shim has a hole for the oil and that it lines up.

Another option could be to extend the fat end of the gib then grind it. One of mine has been repaired like that by silver soldering an end on and whomever did it made a nice job of it.

Good guess on the 10 thou. I've been playing with feeler gauges and believe it probably needs about 0.2mm / 0.008".

 

[Pete.]

First question, is it flat?
The good thing about shim steel is you can buy it in varying thicknesses to suit what you need. I've never scraped turcite so can't help, but would be interested to see it done.

The gib needs to be flat. I ground mine then hammer-straightened it. Cast iron straightens very readily with a ball pein hammer.

Turcite is an absolute breeze to scrape.

Good guess on the 10 thou. I've been playing with feeler gauges and believe it probably needs about 0.2mm / 0.008".

1:100 taper on the gib so 1 thou extra thickness moves it 100 thou. 8 thou moves it .800" which is probably most/all of your adjustment.

 

[Pete.]

Today I made a new slinger for the front spindle bearing. It's a simple but clever system that protects the spindle radial bearing from ingress of dirt, comprising of a triangular plastic 'seal' that resides in a groove in the nose cover but grips and spins on the spindle nose. Any dirt of coolant that gets into the groove is flung out and drips from a drip hole in the cover.

The original was hard and cracked/brken in several places so I turned another from a chunk of nylon.





It slides up the taper and grips gently on the outside land at the top



Here's the groove it sits in and the drain holes.



So all had to do was pop the seal into the groove and fit the nose piece into its place, making sure that the drain holes were in the lowest position.



Whilst I was making this seal I had the machine running at 1000rpm, then for a while at 2000rpm and used my thermometer to check the bearing temperatures. after half an hour the bearings were only at 30 degrees so I called it done and bent the locking tabs on the castle nuts to keep them adjusted right.

 

[Pete.]

So there I was basking in the glory of another job well finished and thinking about my next task (the z slide) when suddenly my heart sank when I realised that with the sspindle and screw installed the y-axis does not go back far enough to fit the Z slide onto the end of the dovetails

At first I was severely p**sed saying words like "oh bother" but then I thought I might be able to get it to slide back enough if I removed the idler gear and y-axis screw bearing housing.

Removed the fork that locates the idler



And the bolts from the screw bearing carrier



And, thankfully, that allowed the slide to go back just enough that I could fit the z slide over the end of the dovetail.

 

[Seadog]

I know that it's a POS, but with my Rong Fu I can tilt the carriage, without the gib, and it can be worked over the dovetail.

 

[Pete.]

I know that it's a POS, but with my Rong Fu I can tilt the carriage, without the gib, and it can be worked over the dovetail.

It depends how fat the gib is in relation to the dovetail width. The (parallel sided, parallelogram section) gib that locates the top-fitting ancilliaries (the milling heads, slides etc) is deliberately fatter to allow that clearance.

 

[Pete.]

Here's a pic that shows the difference in the gibs specifically to allow for removal @Seadog

 

[Pete.]

Doing the other gibs today. I'm out in the morning so I wanted to get them both glued up to allow the glue time to cure.

I hung the z slide onto the vee way and put the gib in the slot.



I have no more turcite to use so I'm using 60 thou Marlon instead. Similar stuff just a different manufactirer. I measured the depth of the gib in the hole and the thickness of the marlon





I have to grind nearly the whole thickness of the marlon off the gib to get it to fit. I set it up on the grinder and spent a good while taking down the thickness. To mae it easier I got a piece of small diameter ally rod and marked it at 6 inches with magic marker (1:100 taper means 60 thou removed is 6000 thou (6") of gib travel. I stopped short of 6" to make sure I had plenty of overhead for fitting the gib and scraping the slides.



After that I cut the marlon, glued it up and clamped the gib down hard. I had to use plenty of stop clamps to stop the gib skidding off the marlon on the glue.



After that I repeated the process on the x-slide gib. It was already half way there due to earlier planing work on the console table.





Hopefully I can get both of these scraped and fitted before Christmas so I can paint that slide and it can spend Christmas day drying.

 

[Pete.]

So, I've got the gibs scraped in back and front. I've had to scrape the backs flat as it's impossible to get them totally flat by hammer straightening with the amount of grinding I've done on them. The x-axis gib was a lot better, being much shorter it curled less when grinding so only needed a small amount doing to it. Then it was a matter of scraping in the Marlon until the gib went in to the start of it's normal adjustment.



The y-axis gib took a lot more doing. When I un-clamped it from the gluing I found that it had curled a little so used the ball pein hammer to straighten it out and over-cooked it. No way to hammer it back straight because of the marlon glued to the opposite face so I had no choice but to scrape out about 5 thou of bend. Got there in the end though.



Once the back was straight I offered it into the slot. It was still over an inch out so plenty of meat left to straighten the front.



Once I got the face flat I again used the 2-shims trick to check the taper. two 5 thou shims one at each end. Tap the gib in and if one goes tight whilst the other slides you know to scrape the tight end and keep doing it until they both pinch up evenly. You also have to make sure the middle is a bit lower so you don't get a false reading but that's easy to do when scraping way liner, a couple of passes over with a very flat radius blade and it will only contact at the ends. I can scrape it back in later once the taper is set.





Again the fat end of the gib was tight so I step-scraped it towards the end until the shims were both being held at the same time. Eventually I got to this stage, which is just a bit high but I wanted to make sure I had some left over in case I had to make alignment adjustments.



Here's the z slide and console table both fitted up with the gibs tapped in tight. None of the mechanisms are fitted it's just propped on a block of wood, because they might have to come off and on several times and of course they need painting.

 

[Pete.]

Now for the moment of truth - alignment check. The test sheet I have is for an Aciera which is the same size and type of mill as mine so I'm using that.

I can only do check No 10 which is to sweep the table from the spindle (which is one of the most important checks). The tolerance given is 0.02mm (0.0008") over 400mm. I am swinging nearly the length of the table which is nearly double that distance.

I fitted a face mill arbor in the MT4 taper and drilled a hole in a piece of plate to hold an indicator. At firstI tried to swing it by hand but I found that even being as steady as I could I was influencing the reading just by holding the weight. SO I added a clamp and used anothe rmag base as a counterweight.



Now I could swing it to both sides of the table without holding it as it was balanced.



And here's the results:

So basically my allowance is 0.8 thou over 12 " and I have 1.3 thou over 22" which is inside the spec for the setup. Also I have the gib hammered in tight on the low side which will probably improve that reading wen I loosen it so that the ttable will travel.

Needless to say, I'm very happy with this first test.

 

[Pete.]

Checking the Z and X axis slides today. I had to complete the scraping on the y axis gib so I could get the adjuster fitted.

Z axis check. The test sheet calls for a maximum of 0.010mm over 150mm. I have 0.0004" (0.01mm) over 200mm so it's well inside the spec.

X axis check. The allowance is 0.020mm over 300mm. As you can see from the video, I have 0.002mm either side of zero variance, just 4 microns total.

The reason that this last test was so much better is undoubtedly due to the time spent over at @pressbrake1 place getting the table ways planed before scraping. Having such an accurate base line to start from clearly produces very good results.

 

[pressbrake1]

Checking the Z and X axis slides today. I had to complete the scraping on the y axis gib so I could get the adjuster fitted.

Z axis check. The test sheet calls for a maximum of 0.010mm over 150mm. I have 0.0004" (0.01mm) over 200mm so it's well inside the spec.

X axis check. The allowance is 0.020mm over 300mm. As you can see from the video, I have 0.002mm either side of zero variance, just 4 microns total.

The reason that this last test was so much better is undoubtedly due to the time spent over at @pressbrake1 place getting the table ways planed before scraping. Having such an accurate base line to start from clearly produces very good results.

Always a pleasure to bless a machine with some accuracy
there’s a reason why planers are king when you want flat and straight

 

[Windy Miller]

I witnessed this accuracy today myself, in person, in the flesh, and with my own eyes!

Really superb scraping and flaking and engineering skills - well done @Pete. you never cease to amaze me with the quality of your work! 100% top job!