I went through the process of searching for a possible answer online to this lately, and looking at schematics for my power feed in a best attempt to decipher my specific problem's root cause, but with diminishing luck I feel it may be best at this point that I ask for help. 
I have an older J-head BP mill which included the factory X-axis power feed on the (user's) right hand side. It is the power feed which has a 6-speed H/L gearbox hanging down at a 90° to the bed surface plane, with a drive motor which is also at a 90° to that gearbox (motor-axis center line being parallel to bed plane), with left/right feed shift-lever between hand crank and table bearing bracket.
On my machine there is a bolt sticking out (of the heavy bed support which rides the Y-ways) basically aiming at the power feed gearbox's cast housing--sort of like a safety stop bolt or end-of-travel "hard stop".
Anyways I was milling a face on some material with the table power feeding towards my left, and hadn't realized that I would be running out of X travel during this operation. Near the end of the facing pass I realized the table was stopped (making zero noises of "crashing" once out of travel), so I immediately stopped the machine. The feed power had loaded up some torque on the feed screw, binding any hand-crank movements, which I managed to free up as to move the hand-cranks again. The 3/16" diameter stop bolt was the item which "stopped" things to a halt so to speak, but didn't bend. The feed motor was still humming away and sounding normal (as it did the entire time), however it was no longer engaged to the lead screw as it was--providing motion.
I can now move the bed manually with hand cranks, and they do feel normal, however the power feed is running (in any gear / H/L) but simply not generating X movement. At one point I did shift gears to witness the crank handles start slowly moving, but they quickly lost drive engagement again.
This makes me feel there is a shaft which is somewhere clamped within the X-feed assembly which came lose or slipped, as I cannot imagine a keyed shaft having lost engagement with zero noises made.
Any ideas of where I might want to begin searching for the problem component? Thank you for any help on this one.
I have an older J-head BP mill which included the factory X-axis power feed on the (user's) right hand side. It is the power feed which has a 6-speed H/L gearbox hanging down at a 90° to the bed surface plane, with a drive motor which is also at a 90° to that gearbox (motor-axis center line being parallel to bed plane), with left/right feed shift-lever between hand crank and table bearing bracket.
On my machine there is a bolt sticking out (of the heavy bed support which rides the Y-ways) basically aiming at the power feed gearbox's cast housing--sort of like a safety stop bolt or end-of-travel "hard stop".
Anyways I was milling a face on some material with the table power feeding towards my left, and hadn't realized that I would be running out of X travel during this operation. Near the end of the facing pass I realized the table was stopped (making zero noises of "crashing" once out of travel), so I immediately stopped the machine. The feed power had loaded up some torque on the feed screw, binding any hand-crank movements, which I managed to free up as to move the hand-cranks again. The 3/16" diameter stop bolt was the item which "stopped" things to a halt so to speak, but didn't bend. The feed motor was still humming away and sounding normal (as it did the entire time), however it was no longer engaged to the lead screw as it was--providing motion.
I can now move the bed manually with hand cranks, and they do feel normal, however the power feed is running (in any gear / H/L) but simply not generating X movement. At one point I did shift gears to witness the crank handles start slowly moving, but they quickly lost drive engagement again.
This makes me feel there is a shaft which is somewhere clamped within the X-feed assembly which came lose or slipped, as I cannot imagine a keyed shaft having lost engagement with zero noises made.
Any ideas of where I might want to begin searching for the problem component? Thank you for any help on this one.
