Modified US Machine Tool Horizontal Mill

Last spring a little US Machine Tool horizontal mill followed me home from a farm auction. It seems that at some point someone invested a lot of time to take a lever operated production machine and convert it to screw and dial operation. There are some other modifications that took some effort like the overarm support that seems it might be adapted from another machine, perhaps the original was missing?

I managed to find these other Practical Machinist threads on US Machine and Burke horizontal mills:

http://www.practicalmachinist.com/v...y/u-s-machine-tool-co-horizontal-mill-300791/

http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/antique-machinery-and-history/us-machine-tools-1-mill-286986/

http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/antique-machinery-and-history/burke-1-horizontal-mill-262346/

My plain bearing mill seems to predate all of the mills in those threads. Besides the arbor in the machine the mill came with three other tool holders and box of cutters. One tool holder is stamped Woodruff Cutter and has a stamped date of 1914 . I haven't dug the serial number book out yet to see if I can find a date for it but it has 3179 stamped below the Y way.

The loose tool holders all measure up to be Brown & Sharpe #10 taper. From what I have read these mills were Brown & Sharpe #9 taper. I haven't taken the arbor out of the spindle to verify its taper yet.

If the spindle taper is Brown & Sharpe #10 I would have to guess that maybe the original taper was damaged at some point and the taper was enlarged to Brown & Sharpe #10?

There are some pictures of the mill in this directory:

Index of /PM/US_machine_mill

I am honored to be in possession of a mill that someone took so much time to clean up and modify so that it could avoid the scrap pile and live on !

rudolf said:

Last spring a little US Machine Tool horizontal mill followed me home from a farm auction. It seems that at some point someone invested a lot of time to take a lever operated production machine and convert it to screw and dial operation. There are some other modifications that took some effort like the overarm support that seems it might be adapted from another machine, perhaps the original was missing?

Click to expand...

Regardless of how it came about, it looks to be a potentially very useful machine as it presently sits for the small footprint it requires.

From beginnings around 1903 or perhaps earlier-yet, Burke & U.S. Machine Tool were each novated and wound up, novated again (as bodies corporate), also apparently merged, de-merged, then merged again, ended their days as part of Houdaille's Powermatic division. Milling machines seemed to have been left for dead somewhere along the way as that outfit morphed into Powermatic of today.

There is a chance that your machine's plain bearing cavities will also hold Timkens or higher-speed ball bearings, much as the Burke #4 can do.

The sliding head makes it more versatile than a Burke #4.

USMT usually finished their castings decently, Burkes, not so well.

The #10 B&S - presuming the spindle is, not just some loose tooling - is probably factory, not a field mod. Both Burke & USMT built largely for reptitious operation, and to customer spec - the large end of the size range in the niche Barker still serves today.

For a mill this size, and absent the cheap and cheerful addition of powered feeds we enjoy today, the lever operation was easily as pragmatic as handwheel feed - perhaps more-so.

Finishing-up or enhancing a restoral is easy. There simply isn't much THERE to have gone wrong then, or need work, now.

Enjoy!

Here are a couple of images of the hand miller from the United States Machine Tool Company circa 1918.
I have one of the upright drills. It is a clone from the H.G. Barr original design. A reasonably simply yet nice
design that was copied by many small manufacturers.

John

Here are some pictures of My #1 mill in various stages of assembly. This one has the serial number of 9875 and was built in either the late 1930's or early 1940's. It was purchased new by the company I worked for in the early 1940's.

Note the carriage at the bottom of the pedestal for the electric motor, and the plate in the back of the pedestal that gives access to the counter weight inside.



It appears looking at the main casting yours did have a similar setup for the bearing and sheave assembly. Someone removed the original bearings and mounted the motor in it's place

I managed to pull the horizontal cutter arbor out today to check the taper on it. The arbor is also a Brown & Sharpe #10 taper. The good news is the other tooling that came with the mill can be put to work with the mill !

The arbor, overarm support and the overarm came out easily which I am really grateful for. It appears the mill was well cared for before it began sitting around collecting its patina.

I also pulled out the Serial Number Reference Book For Metalworking Machinery to look up the mills serial number. My mill is serial number 3179. The serial number book which is Edition 10 from 1988 only has serial numbers going back to 1927. The start of serial numbers in 1927 was 3398. If someone has a older edition of the serial number book with earlier production dates I would be grateful for that information. I posted a couple of pictures of the information that the serial number book has for these mill here:

http://joatis.com/PM/US_machine_mill/IMG_3320.JPG

http://joatis.com/PM/US_machine_mill/IMG_3322.JPG

Basically what I know now about the mills age is that the mill is older than 1927.

jhruska:

Thanks for the two US Machine advertisements showing the flat belt pulley set up and the coolant pump. Those are great to see! I wouldn't be surprised if this mill was originally powered via line shaft.


projectnut:

Your mill with the serial number 9875 was probably built in 1951 according the the serial number book. If you click on the links above you can see that information.

A member named 'doc' in Kentucky posted back in 2015 that he had one of these plain bearing US Machine mills. It looks like doc hasn't posted since 10-13-2017. Does anyone know if doc is still on the board?