#@#$!*!! Smithy Milling Attachment

[ANeat]

Yes Im running a Variable freq drive on mine. I rarely have to change the belt, I do go from high to low, (back gear). I can run a tap much better that I thought.

I have a small box mounted on the arm next to the Digital display that has the switch for Fwd/Off/Rev and a potentiometer for speed control.

[Boomer Mikey]

My Smithy Granite 1324 just quit running Sunday evening... it looks like the motor shorted out taking the motor controller with it. This is the third time in 8 years!

The Grizzly gunsmith lathe is looking more like a need than a want one now.

The best thing I did to fix the Smithy mill-head was to buy a bench top square column mill; even the mini-mills have more power and inherent accuracy.

Boomer

[pjh421]

I was simply going to buy one of these Smithys as funds became available. I sure am glad I read this thread.

Paul

[Boomer Mikey]

Over the weekend I pulled the machine out and removed the motor.

After dis-assembly I found the positive wire (DC Motor) had unsoldered itself from the brush holder. The brushes and the spring on the positive pole obviously were running very hot to unsolder the power lead and the brush spring lost it's temper. I installed a new brush and found two setscrews missing. I ended up tapping all the setscrew holes for the brush holders in the motor housing and replacing them with 8-32 socket head setscrews. I also made a bracket to hold the power cable grommet in place as the "hot glue" factory job hasn't worked since day one.

I cleaned up the motor and added a fan to the 10mm motor shaft... interesting that the DC motor is totally enclosed with a fan shroud but no fan installed. It took some old fart engineering to fabricate a mounting hub to fit a 6-1/2" plastic fan blade I had in the junk drawer. Maybe the motor won't overheat as easily now.

I've been toying with removing the millhead from the machine for several years and I decided that this was as good a time as any to remove it... the only thing it's been doing for the last 7 years is holding some magnetic base work lamps and providing a place to bump my head on. A cherry picker made the job easy enough and I made a 1" thick aluminum plate cover and matching nitrile gasket to cover the opening.

After cleaning up and a few minor adjustments the Smithy is back in service... any lathe is better than no lathe.

Boomer

[lastmanout]

Wow, great thread. I thought I was the only guy nuts enough to have machine tools in the basement. I went from a Sears Atlas 6" lathe (very small and dainty) to a Smithy XL1220 ( I am sorry to this day, wasting my money) to a very old South Bend (worn and still three times the precision of Smithy) to my current herd, a Clausing lathe, a Bridgeport J-head w/DROs, and a surface grinder. All American made iron and I have less than $6500 in the bunch. Deals like that are getting scarce now. Time, wear and tear. Sorry to hear of so many losing their good jobs, I am in between jobs now also. I take little comfort when the politicians and enviromentalists tell me "those are jobs we no longer needed".

[Buckshot]

..............Looks like I'll finally be ordering my mill in the next few weeks. Enco has a free shipping deal going on until June 30th. I'd told myself that when thier free shipping deal popped up, that was the signal to get ready. I had to make several wooden boxes to hold metal stock I'd had stored under a steel table (which also has to go). Then the lathe has to be moved a foot west and a foot south

When it arrives I'll have to pull and stack all the drawers in a 12' workbench so it can be swung around out of the way to get the machine into the shop. It's going to be Enco's 9x42" with power feed and Anilam 3 axis DRO. As soon as it gets in place a VFD is next.

................Buckshot

[Boomer Mikey]

..............Looks like I'll finally be ordering my mill in the next few weeks.

It's going to be Enco's 9x42" with power feed and Anilam 3 axis DRO. As soon as it gets in place a VFD is next.

................Buckshot

I was looking at those yesterday but I don't have room for one anyway. I've heard good reports about the ENCO turret mills. I hope you get a good one; I really like the 30" longitudinal travel, precision quill, ABEC5 bearings, and 3 speed downfeed on them. You going for the step pulley drive? Everyone says they're more reliable. The price is good considering the DRO alone cost $1200 or more.

I\We look forward to some great stories about your acquisition, installation, and implementation of the new mill and it's use.

I've been working on getting my PCNC1100 CNC mill into the shop now for 3 years but it's been tough with a bad back and an arthritic hip. I hope to get the lathe into it's new spot this weekend and the mill inside from the carport the following weekend.

I need to get this stuff done before I have a hip replacement done later this year. I don't want to mess it up trying to do too much... maybe just some load development during the recovery period.

Have fun,

Boomer

[ANeat]

..............Looks like I'll finally be ordering my mill in the next few weeks. Enco has a free shipping deal going on until June 30th. I'd told myself that when thier free shipping deal popped up, that was the signal to get ready. I had to make several wooden boxes to hold metal stock I'd had stored under a steel table (which also has to go). Then the lathe has to be moved a foot west and a foot south

When it arrives I'll have to pull and stack all the drawers in a 12' workbench so it can be swung around out of the way to get the machine into the shop. It's going to be Enco's 9x42" with power feed and Anilam 3 axis DRO. As soon as it gets in place a VFD is next.

................Buckshot

Buckshot Ill be curious to hear how Enco handles large shipments like that. Will it be deliverd to your home/business or will you need to go to a local shipping center to pick it up.

I love those free shipping deals. Got a nice 12x18 granite surface plate a couple months ago with free shipping

[Bret4207]

You guys make me jealous. Between a lack of funds, room, time and my seller being a looney I'm still limited to my Atlas 6" lathe and 7" shaper. One heck of a lot better than the aforementioned "Mexican Mill", but not quite the dream I had in mind.

[Boomer Mikey]

My opinion about Smithy’s Granite 1324 3-in-one machines after owning one for 8 years:

I’ve chambered rifle barrels, turned barrel blanks down and threaded their shanks, trued receivers and re-cut receiver threads, trued bolt faces and squared locking lugs, made countless sizing dies, trimming pilots, nose punches, cut forcing cones, trued barrel flanges, cut sight dovetails, made custom peep, blade, and globe sights, and many, many other tools, and parts for other machines in the shop with the Smithy Granite 1324. I've learned a lot using a Granite 1324 and I wish I could justify replacing it but it still meets my basic needs as a lathe and I have all the tooling and accessories I'll ever need for use with it. One of the nicest features is its huge cross-slide table.

As a machine for someone that wants to work with metal at a basic level with limited capacity and modest accuracy needs it's a viable machine. Smithy's marketing is geared toward education for training, and small business as a repair tool; as such, I think it's OK and I've succeeded in making parts well within 0.001" tolerances but it isn't as easy as with better quality equipment. As a company, Smithy has been responsive and their customer service and warranty excellent. If you have problems with your Smithy call them toll free... one of the positive things they do is to provide upgrade kits for their older machines to support new features and improved function. I ordered a new tailstock upgrade for the machine this week with more barrel travel and downloaded the latest operations manual, a big improvement over the manual supplied with my machine in 2000. All of the adjustments are covered in detail with quality illustrations and step-by-step procedures. It looks like the quality of the machines has improved since 2000 too.

One thing to consider about a Smithy… these are light duty machines… 0.025” are big cuts for these machines and cutting time must be limited to prevent overheating/breakdown. Use ¼”, 5/16”, and 3/8” turning tools with these machines and they won’t work well hogging with a ½” end mill in the mill head.

If you have the room/budget, buy a bench top lathe, square column mill, and drill press.

Those old Atlas/Craftsman machines were good stuff in their day, many have so little use on them that they're still good machines; they’re capable of making many useful things for the reloading room/hobby. I feel they’re superior to the 7X10/12/14 Chinese lathes quality but you’d be hard pressed to find as many parts and accessories for them. It’s amazing how much you can do with the Chinese mini-mill and mini-lathes, the Internet is full of projects made with them and tutorials for using, improving, and modifications.

I've been looking for an Atlas 7" shaper on the west coast for quite some time now; I love those things, they're like me... old and obsolete but still good.

Boomer

[kjg]

well you guys just plain SUCK, all I have is two unimat's one for drilling and extreamly light milling, and the other for turning small items, top punches pins and other small stuff under 3/4" diam stuff, so if you don't want your smity's want to trade? kjg

[Buckshot]

Buckshot Ill be curious to hear how Enco handles large shipments like that. Will it be deliverd to your home/business or will you need to go to a local shipping center to pick it up.

I love those free shipping deals. Got a nice 12x18 granite surface plate a couple months ago with free shipping

.............The free shipping is to a local cross dock facility. I sure wish it was via lift gate to the foot of the driveway It apparently weighs 2450 lbs. I'll have to rent a 2 axle car trailer (or something to carry that concentrated weight) to go get it and bring it home. I figure I'll get 2 sticks of 2" steel pipe and cut them into 3' lengths to use as rollers to get it up to the garage door. The concrete floor inside is finished so it should skid okay.

I also see now that Enco has a 1 year warrenty on them, which is nice. According to reports on the HSM and Practical Machinists BB's the machines do what they're supposed to do with a minimum of issues and down time. I also like the large flat square ways on the knee. This is it:

http://www.use-enco.com/CGI/INPDFF?P...LMPI&PMCTLG=01

Last year in anticipation of getting the mill I spent a bit over $2600 getting some 'Needfulls'.



That stack of stuff next to the small toolbox is the stuff. On the bottom is a Phase II 10" rotary table and tailstock. On top of that is a Parlec 6x9" milling vise. I already had a used 6" Kurt. Sitting on top of the vise is an indexing head and a 3 jaw chuck for it. On top of that and behind the toolbox is a Bison 2 piece vise. You can bolt the stationary jaw at one end of the table and the moveable jaw at the other, so you can clamp LONG stuff. In the USPS box is an ETM R8 chuck for ER40 collets.



The place right now is a freaking WREAK! I'm standing at the west end, in front of the work bench looking east. The reloading bench is to my right. See all that crap standing up against the back wall?



The left photo is from the south eastern corner looking west. I was standing in front of that workbench to take the other 2 photos. The right photo is from the door to the kitchen. I was standing next to the toolbox to take the left photo. Lookit all that stuff leaned up against the workbench! The whole floor looks pretty much like that in the right photo.

The milling machine will sit there where all the junk is in the right photo. In order to make a bit more room the lathe will have to move a foot or so to the west and another foot to the south toward the reloading bench.

What a MESS!

..................Buckshot

[ANeat]

.............The free shipping is to a local cross dock facility. I sure wish it was via lift gate to the foot of the driveway It apparently weighs 2450 lbs. I'll have to rent a 2 axle car trailer (or something to carry that concentrated weight) to go get it and bring it home. I figure I'll get 2 sticks of 2" steel pipe and cut them into 3' lengths to use as rollers to get it up to the garage door. The concrete floor inside is finished so it should skid okay.

Buckshot when I hauled my Bridgeport I rented a single axle tilt trailer intended for hauling a skid loader. It was nice because there were no ramps to get in the way. It was rated at 4000 pounds so the 2k lb mill was no problem.

I think the rental was $40.00 for a day, a bargain

[grumpy one]

This is obvious stuff, but the key issue is the slope of your driveway. If you happen to have a downhill 30% slope, as I do, you have some real issues doing this by the usual informal techniques. When I bought my mill I'd already had the experience of backing a tandem trailer with about 2.5 tons of computer batteries on it down the driveway, and I knew it didn't work. As soon as I hit the full slope with that load of batteries the whole rig just took off downhill, with all four wheels locked on the tow car (a maxi-size sedan - think Crown Vic). An extra problem I anticipated with the mill that I didn't have with the batteries is that its center of gravity is a long way above the trailer bed, and I'd have needed some serious steel cables, well anchored, around its head to keep it from falling over. Bearing all this in mind I paid a team of experts to deliver my mill to the bottom of the driveway.

Buckshot made some reference to "the foot" of the driveway, so some of this might be relevant.

And completely off-topic, those batteries weren't the worst debacle I ever got into hauling stuff on a trailer. I once bought a tractor (not a big one - an IH 424, just over 4000 pounds plus the wheel weights and accessories) and took it to the farm on the tandem trailer behind the sedan. I started to go up the farm driveway, got about half way, and ran out of traction. When I "stopped", though, that wasn't the end of it: the whole rig decided to slide all the way back down to the gate, with the tow car's wheels locked. Luckily after a while the trailer wandered off into the ditch and it more or less stopped. I decided my best shot was to unload the tractor right there, and recover the rig when the weight was off the trailer. Bad idea: as I started to back the tractor down the ramps, the weight shifted to behind the rearward axle of the trailer, and the tow bar lifted the back wheels of the car off the ground. I had spare wheels and all kinds of stuff behind those wheels, but it just lifted the back of the car, wheels and all, over all of it. Since it was a rear drive car there was nothing keeping the front wheels of the car still, so the whole rig took off down the driveway again, with me sitting on the half-unloaded tractor, skidding along down the driveway too. For better or worse, I decided I was committed and drove off the trailer anyway, while the whole shooting match was in motion. Of course the ramps were gone by then so it was a bit of a bump, but once the tractor was off the trailer the back wheels of the car dropped down and everything stopped sliding. Pity there wasn't a movie of the whole event, I'd have won a Best Home Video prize for sure.

[Buckshot]

...............My driveway doesn't have much of a slope, and in fact it's biased TOWARD the garage. Speaking of that, the whole place is even a bigger mess then before. I unloaded the big 4'x8'x16" cabinet that was against the east wall so I could put it against the south wall. Naturally that meant everything had to come out, and where to put it? You guessed it, it's all over everywhere!

I got the cabinet moved (I think I may have hurt myself) and that was enough for today. Tomorrow I'll begin reloading it, and then have to make a trip to Lowes for some more shelving materials. Hopefully by tomorrow evening I will have some semblance of order and more space to boot.

..............Buckshot

[Boomer Mikey]

I moved the Smithy lathe to the other side of the shop Sunday but it cost me a trip to our local ER to get 5 sutures put in my elbow. The pry-bar I was using slipped and my elbow went crashing into the corner of the table top opening up a 1-1/2" gash Saturday afternoon; we finally got home at 1 am Sunday morning after an exciting evening at the hospital and a delightful meal at McDonald's. I went to a CAS match Sunday morning after moving the machine. I didn't shoot the match but I kept score for our posse and accepted bribes to ignore some misses.

I still hope to get the CNC mill in the shop over the Memorial Day weekend but the domino effect of moving everything around at least 3 times is killing me. Another delay will be the process of leveling and re-calibrating the machines before their use.

I finally broke down and got a 6" Kurt D675 milling vise when enco had them on sale with free shipping. After fooling around with 4" and 5" Chinese milling vises for years, I can say KURT vises at 4 times the cost are worth every penny and more.

My pile of accessories contains many of the same items Buckshot purchased from our local machine tool and accessory addiction company... enco. I waited 3 years to buy a Phase II 8" rotary table with the chuck and tailstock and after doing so I was given 2 more 8" tables and a 10" table to go with my existing $99 Harbor Freight 4" table... go figure.

I ordered a tailstock to go with the cheap 5C indexer... it cost more than the indexer.

38-55 gave me a full set of 5C collets by 64th's including a set of hex collets and some metric collets in a custom oak cabinet along with a very fine 8" X-Y rotary table and too many goodies to list. I'll be sorting through my plunder for years.

I love this stuff,

Boomer

[Buckshot]

"38-55 gave me a full set of 5C collets by 64th's including a set of hex collets and some metric collets in a custom oak cabinet along with a very fine 8" X-Y rotary table and too many goodies to list. I'll be sorting through my plunder for years."

Holy smoke! Does your Smitty use 5C's? Sounds like a once in a lifetime happening, you lucky dog! I have 5C's by 32nds and have been slowly adding the in bewteen 64ths. I sure wish someone offered a 'completer set' of the 64ths to go with a 32nd set.

................Buckshot

[Boomer Mikey]

The Smithy Granite 1324 has a D1-4 spindle nose with a 1.125" spindle bore... I ordered a 5C chuck with the machine and purchased a 5C Set Tru D1-4 collet chuck from Lathemaster a few years ago and a cheap set of 5C collets to go with the enco cheap ($30.00) 5C indexer and a 5C square and hex collet block set; I was ordering collets as I needed them between my 18 piece 1/16" set too.

38-55 gave me another set of collets I haven't been able to identify with a single taper on their nose. They're definitely not prescission items as their outside body diameters vary as much as 0.025" but they include square, hex, and round sizes to about 3/4" by 1/16ths. I'm thinking I could make a grinder toolholder to use them for sharpening mills, reamers and tool bits with a 6" cutter grinder.

I've been drooling to get a 6 jaw Set Tru 6" chuck but I'm going to wait a bit longer to see if I decide to order a Grizzly Gunsmith's lathe; it has a D1-5 spindle nose... One of the reasons I haven't ordered one, It would make my other 3 D1-4 chucks including the 5C chucks obsolete.

Got your mill yet Buckshot?

Boomer

[Buckshot]

I've been drooling to get a 6 jaw Set Tru 6" chuck but I'm going to wait a bit longer to see if I decide to order a Grizzly Gunsmith's lathe; it has a D1-5 spindle nose... One of the reasons I haven't ordered one, It would make my other 3 D1-4 chucks including the 5C chucks obsolete.

Got your mill yet Buckshot?

Boomer

...........Actually a 6 jaw is more used for thin walled stuff vs solid pieces. The number of jaws can hold it without causing as much (or any) distortion as a 3 jaw might. They're nice without a doubt but also limited in the amount of adjustment you can make. They also shift the entire body of the chuck, so high speed rotation can be an issue with a larger total weight offset.

I doubt I would have bought one to use, but the 2 I have (6 jaw and 2 jaw) came wth the lathe. I use it because it's 6" and my 3 and 4 jaw chucks are both larger.

If you do get the Grizzly lathe, be sure to get or plan on getting the 'through the spindle" lever collet closer. That way you can remove and replace stuff with the lathe running, or advance barstock with it running. Makes it nice if you're making a bunch of something.

I haven't ordered the mill yet. I went and bought the square steel tube I need to make a framework I can set the lathe's cabinet stand on. A 20' stick of 2x2x.250" was $128 with tax! Once that is accomplished and I can move the lathe I'll order it. It will probably be the first week of June when that happens.

...................Buckshot