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Looking for advise on Frankenmill Nichols Miller/Duff

darneson

Plastic
Joined
Jan 1, 2018
Lets start with the fact that I don't actually KNOW anything about machining. I just find it interesting and my only knowledge comes from watching YouTube videos.

A guy near me has a shop closing down and getting rid of equipment. One of the pieces is...I think...a Nichols Miller horizontal mill with a DUFF head mounted to the top of it. No power feeds or anything. It had been a work horse refurbishing oil field drill bits. I am thinking about getting it if I can talk him down to a couple hundred bucks just to have something to ruin perfectly good pieces of metal with while I try to learn something. That being said the limited run of DUFF as a company means I likely will never find a spare part. I also don't know if it used standard type tooling or if it is hard to find oddball crap. There is actually a second Nichols Miller in the back that looks like they removed the table and turned in to some kind of grinder setup so I may be able to get another bottom half as parts as I doubt anybody would buy it as a single unit. Is this one of those things that is just more trouble and money that is worth or a jump on it as a workable learning project that won't drive one to madness and bankruptcy?
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Show us a picture of the overall machine, so we can see how much of the Nichols is still there, and how the Duff head is mounted.
 
Nichols is usually a horizontal production mill run with air cylinders. I can only imagine it must have vertical mill attachment. Up here they sell them for scrap especially if they only have hand feed.
 
I find a Nichols a very handy small mill in my personal shop to complement a much larger mill, and use it in either vertical (accessory head) or horizontal mode as appropriate.

Let's get an overview picture of that Nichols, please, so we can see how much of it is actually still there.
 








 
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