Van Norman No. 12 parts and pieces. Help identify if you can

Inherited a VN no. 12 that's in very nice condition. It was headed to the scrap yard after owners death. I Would like to learn how to use it, enrolling in a machine course on milling this fall at our local vocational training school and it would be nice to know what these parts are and where they go or even if they go to the no.12. They have no identification numbers or stamps. If they don't belong to the machine that would be good to know as well. Thanks all for your advise.

Your first photo is of a slotting attachment. When you want to use it, it mounts to the front face (spindle opening) of the VN head. It reciprocates an end-cutting tool back and forth. Useful for cutting internal keyways if you don't have a suitable broach.

Your second and third photos show a bunch of arbors. These mount in the spindle to hold cutting tools. A reamer is mounted on one of the arbors, and that would be such a cutting tool. You also have arbors to hold milling cutters.

Congratulations, that looks like a very nice machine! Even better, you are starting out with a good amount of 'tooling' - the various accessories you use with the machine, ranging from necessary basic functionality to some 'nice to haves'. Sfriedberg identified pretty much everything which is visible. I will say the reamer appears to be on a Morse taper arbor, and you also may have a shell mill arbor in the top left of the box in picture #2. Hopefully there are also some collets or end mill holders in there, as you seem to be all set as far as horizontal arbors go. The VN #12 uses Van Norman 'C' tooling, which also goes by the Hardinge name of '5V'.

A few other notes to get you started:

If you don't have a paper copy, you can download the operations/maintenance manuals for the #12: Van Norman Machine Tool Co. - Publication Reprints | VintageMachinery.org

The machining course will hopefully cover the basics of caring for your machine, but the #12 has some differences from your standard turret mill (e.g. Bridgeport) that you're likely to use in the course. For one, it has geared transmissions for the spindle and table powerfeed which have the gears running in an oil reservoir. Follow the instructions in the manual(s) to refresh the fluids and make sure everything is properly lubricated before you get going, and it will last forever.

sfriedberg said:

Your first photo is of a slotting attachment. When you want to use it, it mounts to the front face (spindle opening) of the VN head. It reciprocates an end-cutting tool back and forth. Useful for cutting internal keyways if you don't have a suitable broach.

Your second and third photos show a bunch of arbors. These mount in the spindle to hold cutting tools. A reamer is mounted on one of the arbors, and that would be such a cutting tool. You also have arbors to hold milling cutters.

Click to expand...

Well sfriedberg, your good advice has been put to work as ebay ad descriptions

Van Norman Model #12 Slotting Head | eBay

1 Van Norman Model #12 Drive Arbor Collection. VN No.12 Arbors for Milling Mach | eBay

thebencarter said:

Well sfriedberg, your good advice has been put to work as ebay ad descriptions

Van Norman Model #12 Slotting Head | eBay

1 Van Norman Model #12 Drive Arbor Collection. VN No.12 Arbors for Milling Mach | eBay

Click to expand...

I've noticed it. I'm wondering what we should expect for the mill: will we see it piece by piece, or will it be advertised on Craig List?

Paolo

So much for learning how to use it, I guess. I can see getting rid of the slotting head, but getting rid of the arbors pretty much means not using the machine. (Especially since OP did not ask about any endmill holders for the spindle.)

If that collection of arbors were VN "2" (aka 50V) instead of VN "C" (aka 5V), I'd be on it myself. I picked up a VN universal subhead that takes 50V collets and need a couple of stub arbors for milling cutters. Also a 50V 1/4" endmill holder, but that's being searched elsewhere.

Still keeping the machine, selling duplicates including slotting head

sfriedberg said:

So much for learning how to use it, I guess. I can see getting rid of the slotting head, but getting rid of the arbors pretty much means not using the machine. (Especially since OP did not ask about any endmill holders for the spindle.)

If that collection of arbors were VN "2" (aka 50V) instead of VN "C" (aka 5V), I'd be on it myself. I picked up a VN universal subhead that takes 50V collets and need a couple of stub arbors for milling cutters. Also a 50V 1/4" endmill holder, but that's being searched elsewhere.

Click to expand...

I am selling on only the duplicates of the pieces including the Head. There were 2 of those monsters,18 Arbors and a mess of collets, 30 or so. This was a High school shop teacher so his parts collection for them was as extensive as the leftovers from his class. I definatley am going to learn to use this amazing machine at our Helena College of Technology but feel a chance to make some money on duplicates is a win/win. I measured and held them side by side to ensure duplicate before I put them in the sale pile. I apologize for using your words in the description but they were exactly what they were and I wanted to be correct in my description. Sorry to have offended anyone with my sale, I hope I did the right thing

It will not be sold piece by piece, these are duplicates of the collection.

Brand new VN12 owner here. Just got it yesterday. I'm curious about the slotting attachment for these mills. Rusty nail, do you have the drive arbor for the slotting head? Or is there another way of driving the mechanism? What does it look like?

rustynail said:

I am selling on only the duplicates of the pieces including the Head. There were 2 of those monsters,18 Arbors and a mess of collets, 30 or so. This was a High school shop teacher so his parts collection for them was as extensive as the leftovers from his class. I definatley am going to learn to use this amazing machine at our Helena College of Technology but feel a chance to make some money on duplicates is a win/win. I measured and held them side by side to ensure duplicate before I put them in the sale pile. I apologize for using your words in the description but they were exactly what they were and I wanted to be correct in my description. Sorry to have offended anyone with my sale, I hope I did the right thing

Click to expand...

Since I took the shot at you, I'll apologize. You didn't do anything wrong, and I was mistaken in my assumption - it appeared as if you were collecting information just to profit from it on ebay. That said, I don't think anyone imagined you had such a surplus of tooling; VN C/5V tooling can be had, but it's reasonably scarce. I don't own a #12, but from what I see most folks make do with a few arbors (if they have any) and a few common size collets or end mill holders. There used to be Chinese collet sets available from Tools 4 Cheap but they closed down, and I'm not sure any are currently produced. You are very fortunate to have everything you need from the start!

Ben

I think you are making a mistake selling all 10 arbors for one price. I might have missed it on your eBay post, but I didn't see the actual arbor diameter. I don't have a 12 and am not very familiar with the accessories that go with the machine but I think some buyers would be interested in a 7/8" arbor while others may be more interested in 1" arbors to match their existing tooling. Just my 2 cents and with inflation my opinion isn't even worth that.

Personally, I'm not too apologetic of my sarcasm for a few reasons, first being that the OP did have the time of reading the comments and post the auctions on eBay, but not enough time to thank Sfriedberg and Ben for the information.
If Rustynail didn't have such a big urge in selling stuff, he would have done much better and committed fewer mistakes (e.g. likely, the driving arbor for the slotting head is among the bulk of tooling is selling and a slotting head without that piece will likely sell for significantly less).

Rustynail: if you're genuinely interested in learning how to use the mill, why haven't you profited of this forum to asked relevant questions about your mill and what tooling/accessories you need for what, etc.? If you wanted to thin your collection of arbors, probably we could have helped you in selecting the ones it was worth keeping, etc.

Paolo