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J. Holroyd & co ltd horizontal milling machine

timbo917

Plastic
Joined
Aug 7, 2011
Location
belgium/mechelen
Hello,

After almost a year of searching I finaly found a small milling machine
to complete my workshop. It was verry cheap so it needs a lot of TLC.
Anyone more documentation of this maker and machine?
I found the maker but not much info about it.
regards

tim


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Belgium must be a desert for milling machines Timbo if it took you a year to find a museum piece like that. For your information " Holroyd " are still in business in Milnrow near Rochdale, about 2 miles from where I live. They are World leaders in the manufacture of screw compressor rotor grinding machines, previously they made screw milling machines. I couldn't tell you when they last made a conventional milling machine.

They are owned by a Chinese company now, the same people who own Jones and Shipman grinding machines. Maybe they'd be interested in taking the miller off your hands to use as a show piece.

Regards Tyrone.
 
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I could not say that its a desert but I know a lot of vintage machines where
scraped when the metal prices where higer a couple of years ago.
Most of machines I went to take a look at where huge or they asked a fortune.
So you could say it took me a year to exacly find what I was looking for.
Thanks for the tip on the company who made it,wil contact them for some info but
I am not planning on selling it. I want to restore and use it.
 
Timbo -

I would be a bit surprised if you got any useful information about your mill from Holroyds. I have known people from there for a fairly long time and through all of that period they were concerned mostly with screw compressor rotors and machines for making them of various kinds. I would be highly surprised if they have anyone still working there who knows anything useful about any of their general purpose machine tools.

They did have some old machine tools in their reception at one time - I vaguely remember an antique lathe and they also had a small mill engine on display at one time, which is now in the Ellenroad museum just up the road. I haven't been there for a good few years so may not be the same now.

I wish you luck with your re-build, but I have to say that a flat belt drive horizontal would not be my choice for a useful mill. Surely you could find something a bit more modern at scrap prices to re-build?
 
Yes that would have been less dificuld but I love the old flatbeld machines.
Rebuilding these machines is part of the hobby for me.
Its worth the question to holroyds,maybe they have some kind of
archive. No harm in asking I think.
 
Hey Bill,I was thinking in the same direction. I never worked
on a horizontal mil before but I can see it has more potention as a vertical mill allone.
It al comes to setup an clamping as you said.
 
In school I learned to mill on a vertical machine but I don't
have much experience. I left school and joined the belgian navy. Did not touched
a milling machine since. Now that I made a career change and am more at home I want to
install me a small machine shop with vintage machines. I think for the occasional milling that
I wil do I wil mannage. It also came with a wooden box with about 80 or so mills in it. It was so heavy
I could not pick it up allone.
 
I'm lucky matey, my local bar stocks quite a few. " Leffe " and " Hoegarden "on draught to name just two. Plus a good range of bottled Belgian ales. Most are to my taste but the Lambic's aren't. Regards Tyrone.
 
With an old horizontal you can set up various sized cutters known distances apart on the arbor, all the better if they are all the same diameter. If you have the room the mill set up like that will make a fine and productive keying machine, and you can use a vertical for all the other milling.

Then you get a vise that centers, that is the front and back jaws move on RH and LH screw threads so no matter what diameter the shaft you set in it the shaft is on the same center. Now you have one heck of a powerful shaft keying setup.

Put a 2" diameter shaft in, go to the correct cutter width which is exactly 2" away from the next larger one, cut your key, then put in a 3" shaft and go to the right width cutter, etc. A "sled" mill (Standard mill cutter) will cut a keyseat much faster than an endmill.

I worked in a sawmill machine shop where I had the pleasure of deep drilling with a horizontal, not something I would recommend to friends. I hated that B&S flat belt mill, and it was all we had.
 








 
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