This Old Mill - Part 2

This Old Mill - Part 2

What to do about the Mill-Head???

Between casting jobs, working on the NexMill-15 and life in general, I've been plugging away at the Gorton Mill.

Note that I've dropped the "Lars" prefix as they were the company that supplied the CPM based terminal and control electronics that have long since disappeared. The physical mill was manufactured by Gorton.

The mill has been wire-brushed, vacuumed and generally cleaned-up.

This is the junction box that all motors, sensors, AC etc terminated to...

Over the next few weeks I'll start to carefully strip out all lines relating to the servo drives, or any cables that dead end from being simply cut.

Everything will be carefully packed for future use, if not on this mill than on a Gen-3 mill that surely will come after the NexMill-15 is done.

The box, once gutted will be kept in place to house AC, and possibly a small oil pump and reservoir.

This a shot of the 2 (two) oil lines that lube the ways of the Z-Axis.

Upon familiarizing myself further with the mill in the course of cleaning it, I found similar lines for both the X & Y ways on the table.

This is a view of the table lube lines as described above.

And this is the dreaded Power Quill as outlined on the first page of this series.

Again, I find myself indebted to the machining community at large that collectively enlightened me as to where to find information and numerous offers of help on this machine.

A fellow Canadian located in Alberta (Dave M.) has certainly put rest my initial idea of simply running the motor at 120VAC rather than it's rated 240VAC. I won't go into the details, beyond that fact that the head would likely have heat & over-current issues as it's speed likely is controlled by a VFD (Variable Frequency Drive ???) controller and not just a drop in voltage...

The image on the right shows that I've removed the secondary Z-Axis, as well as the manual jog controls (that were useless without the actual control circuitry anyway). The remaining Z-Axis can be moved over toward the center but will require 2 additional holes be drilled and tapped into the column.

The motor has a series of hoses that feed it, this a 3/8th" line for clean air @ 90PSI. A sensor within the power quill interfaces to a box (presumably a VFD controller) that also provides the "InterLock" function.

InterLock is the auto shut down that occurs if the air lines falls below 45PSI.

Obviously this head needs to be kept cool.

This line is to feed a misted oil at 30 - 60PSI to the lower bearing(s) of the spindle.

Apparently a series of xx micron filters were originally in place to ensure the bearings ran smooth.

The above being said, A) I don't have a compressor that can deliver the CFM's at the PSI levels required for proper operation. B) All that I need this rig to do is face-off a few thou of Alum or brass from plaques, and machine the odd precision surface for bigger and better CNC mills.

What would be a more hassle free replacement???, and what is a fair price to sell the pair of power quills that came with this unit, and is there even a market??? I'm thinking that there is, but it's outside of the small hobby guys like me...

Or... lets get way out there... If I ran a 240VAC line to the mill, tried to resurrect the VFD (if that's what it is), by passed the InterLock sensors, and kept the speed down to the 5 to 10,000RPM range, promised to be real careful (with very light loads and feeds, honest mom I'll be careful), supplied 20 to 30 PSI to the air line and drip-fed synthetic oil to the lower bearings simply under gravity feed, would I be an idiot??? (be gentle...)

Thanks in advance for any info...

frnkgmbk@renfrew.net

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