bought a new mill

[arjacobson]

Well not exactly a NEW one. I have been looking for a small horizontal mill for some time now. I really wanted a hardinge but fell into a deal on a kent owens 1-14. Comes with 3 arbors and a ton of cutters. Years ago I ran one like this except the table was 10' long.! Anyway the old girl weighs around 2100 lbs and I will pick it up next week. Should be a fun project cleaning/painting/getting it running. I am slowly building up my retirement shop. Got 17 years left to find a good 2nd op hardinge-shaper-surface grinder-etcetc

[Jim Flinchbaugh]

Fun fun fun!

[Ed K]

That's great. I found a Hardinge locally last summer. It is in need of some work but the basic machine is OK. I'm with you on the home machine shop!

[arjacobson]

I have wanted a horizontal this size for a long time. I'm not too worried about the production mill not being as handy because I have setup and run mills like this hundreds of times. In fact I am already coming up with jobs to run on the machine and I haven't even picked it up yet..! Should be a fun machine to have:D

[gcollins]

AJ,
Tell me what you can do on a horizontal mill easier than you can with a Vertical mill? I had a friend tell me about 2 years ago when I was hunting a vertical mill that I should just get a horizontal mill ? I was going nuts trying to buy a Benchcraft Vertical mill here in town that was just driving me crazy [smilie=b: and i thought he was telling me that to just make me start looking for a small horizontal mill . Your mill sounds like it pretty good size? Post a pic! I am sure all of us guys and gals have seen stuff not cleaned up before!:p:p
Greg

[HollowPoint]

I look forward to seeing some of your projects.

HollowPoint

[arjacobson]

You can do keyways very easily-you can slab mill taking off quite a bit at a time-you can cut gears with a dividing head-you can gang cutters and mill different widths at the same time-etcetc. Horizontal mills are very rigid and can take some heavy cuts. I already have a bridgeport but this is just another addition to the shop that that will allow me to do other setups that are harder to make on a vertical mill. I will have to start posting some more :drinks:of my projects

[gcollins]

Thanks AJ,
If I ever run acrossed a good deal on one I just might have to try and pick it up!
Greg

[bob208]

get a carbide insert face mill. i have a 4" one i use in my bruke for squiring up plates that have been drunt out with a torch. it is a 6 x 36.

[Tokarev]

AJ,
Tell me what you can do on a horizontal mill easier than you can with a Vertical mill?

Greg

keyways yeah, big time. everything which requires a prolonged straight cavity
milling a face of a long rod is easier on a horizontal mill than on a vertical.
examples include breech of a rifle barrel, like I mentioned in another thread here.
even crowning a barrel w/o unscrewing from the action would be easier.

when I took shop class at school there was only a horizontal mill there, and I love them ever since.

[W.R.Buchanan]

Tokarev: Why wouldn't you just chuck the barrel in the vise and side mill the face on a Bridgeport type mill ? This takes exactly 2 minutes to setup including the cutter installation.

AR Jacobsen: Having a horizontal mill is a nice addition to a shop. Good luck with it.

For the rest of you: He already has a Bridgeport. A horizontal is way down the list from a Bridgeport type mill as far as what you can do with it. How often to you cut keyways? And unless the key way is a foot or two long I can beat you with a Vertical mill every day.

If you can have only one, you really need the Bridgeport.

With a Bridgeport you can do two things. You can drill holes and you can mill on stuff. All the numerous other operations are mearly variations of Drilling or Milling.

A horizontal can only do one thing. Mill on stuff, period.

Been doing this for some time, in fact, I'm doing it right now!

Randy.

[Tokarev]

This is not a very fitting example, but if you imagine that the part is a 26" rod and you'd have to machine the same kind of cavity, then you'd picture what I was referring to.

[W.R.Buchanan]

Tokarev: if that part was 26" long then I could see how it would be advantageous to make it on a horizontal. or more properly a CNC horizontal.

However there is a big difference between doing that part on a CNC horizontal and a manual horizontal.

The way you would make that 26" long part on a Bridgeport is by clamping the part vertically on the back of the table and rotating the turret so the whole operation was done next to the knee. Usually an angle plate would be bolted in line with the back of the table so as to provide more places to clamp the part.

This is the common way to do parts like this. I have done literally hundreds of long parts like this in my shop.

Trying to do it on a manual horizontal would be "challenging." Doable, but challenging. On the horizontal all of your moves would be Y/Z moves, as opposed to X/Y moves on a vertical which are much easier to "think" with.

Randy

[arjacobson]

We used to make a similar part at the white farm/oliver tractor plant. I did it on a cincinnati #3 horizontal mill. Basically it was held in a vee block and we used an endmill. Fed the table in and used an indicator for depth. If I remember right it had 6 cuts but that was a LONG time ago(1988-1992) I made thousands of shifter forks-shifter rods-steering knuckles-gear box housings-lift arms-etcetcetc. We had two large vertical mills-One bridgeport tracer mill-one duplex mill-2 hand mills and six or seven horizontal mills. The horizontals were in use very day and we did all sorts of different setups. Sometimes 5-6 setups a day.... I DO miss running the large milwaukee vertical mill though... 10" carbide insert tooth cutter-400 rpm-.400 cut at 10-1/2 inches of feed.. forging steel.. We had two large movable shields that kept the shavings contained.. We cleaned up at the end of the shift with an aluminum scoop shovel!! I still got the scars and burn marks to prove it. Steel toed boots lasted about 3 months......:mrgreen:

[W.R.Buchanan]

AR I saw a #5 Cincincinati Vertical once that had a chunk of Iron on the bed that was 8 feet long 4 feet wide and 2 feet thick. I think they were roughing out a fender die for a large American car on it. There was 2 mexicans with scoop shovels trying to keep up with it and the chips were burning the oil out of the cement floor. It was literally spraying the chips which were the size of curly fries, off the shell mill. They were a nice blue color, I mean the chips, not the mexicans!

It was fun to watch those guys sweating bullets with the foreman whipping them the whole time. Hard to find good help anymore.

Randy

[arjacobson]

WR=LOL- I can relate to those pretty blue shavings! Picked up the mill today and will post some picks tomorrow. I got a complete owners manual-70 mill cutters-2 full arbors-9 40 taper arbors(misc) 3 involute cutters and a pile of arbor spacers.. Also bought a small wade turret lathe-picking that up next week!!