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Jones and Shipman 540 power feed

ronan

Cast Iron
Joined
Feb 14, 2009
Location
ireland
I recently picked up a Jones and Shipman 540 for not a lot of money and i am working on it to get it back in good order. One thing that strikes me though is the amount of hand cranking to get the wheel to rise and fall to where you want it.

I know J&S did their own power feed, but has anyone retro-fitted a powerfeed to rise and lower the wheel ? I was wondering if a z-axis power feed kit as used on the bridgeport mills could be grafted on ?

Has anyone done anything like that ?
 
I have a J&S 540 with power up/down feed. It's important because the handwheel on my machine is 0.2 mm per revolution. That's 50 turns to go up by 10mm. Since the vertical travel is about 400mm, we're talking 2000 turns to go all the way up, and the same to go down.

Just a comment that when I use the power feed, the normal handwheel mechanism does not rotate. The power feed drives the lead screw directly from a motor at the bottom of the machine. So it doesn't make use of all the reduction gearing from the handwheel.
 
Thanks for taking the time to reply Ballen. I might see if i can buy a power feed cheap from china or get one second hand and have a play with it, see if i can fit it to the grinder.
 
Might do better with a DC motor and worm drive hooked directly to the screw in similar fashion to the original. Using an ordinary electronic feed unit and driving via the hand wheel gearing will be very slow.

Depending on space I'd be considering a poly-Vee belt drive via electromagnetic clutch. For testing purposed maybe scavenge the clutch off a car aircon system and a big 24 volt wiper motor off a lorry or bus.

I have a couple of nice 12 volt servo motors with worm drive gearbox on the output in the "gonna be useful one day" box that you could easily convince me are wiper motors with a different label. At 3 for £10 from a new surplus outfit I wasn't complaining. The one I used was great. I think Bosch or one of the other electrical / electronic outfits list a goodly range of such motors at almost acceptable prices.

Clive
 
I had an early 540 and found that hand cranking from "low" to "high" was a pain. I did look into removing the plate at the bottom of the vertical hand feed shaft and putting on a motor drive, but ended up changing the machine. I suppose it depends on how much grinding you do, but I got sick pretty quickly!
 








 
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