Fritz Werner Vertical Mill

I'm considering buying a Fritz Werner 3.230 vertical mill but know little about the machine overall. I haven't been able to find much online either. The seller is a scrap yard so they know nothing about it as well. So, I turn to PM. What can you tell me about this mill? Has anyone used one? Capable machine? What taper does the spindle use? Any info would be useful.

Pics below:









Thanks,
David

I had a Fritz similar to that one, different model, smaller, but looks about the same era.

Great machine, built like a brick outhouse. Unfortunately a lack of space after a house move meant it had to go. If I could have found room it would still be in the shop.
2MT in both vertical & horizontal mandrels.
Easy to rotate vertical head & shift from vertical to horizontal use.

Mark

I have a friend here with one very much like that one. He likes it. even if you don't want it Im guessing that you could sell him a bunch of stuff off it, like the x axis lead screw he crashed. pm me if that is an option.

old-biker-uk said:

I had a Fritz similar to that one, different model, smaller, but looks about the same era.

Great machine, built like a brick outhouse. Unfortunately a lack of space after a house move meant it had to go. If I could have found room it would still be in the shop.
2MT in both vertical & horizontal mandrels.
Easy to rotate vertical head & shift from vertical to horizontal use.

Mark

Click to expand...

+ 1, great machine, long time but I remember the smoothness of the slides combined with good rigidity and predictability in the days before DROs
IMO very much like a smaller version of the Thiel I used, another beautiful machine.

Both had been well used, but the quality shone through, proven at inspection.

The OP's mill runs on 50 Hz. Is that going to be a problem here in the States?

From the looks of it, that Fritz Werner mill has been in the USA for some time prior to this thread. It was likely running on 60 Hz current for a long time already. In actuality, with an AC motor, running on 60 hz means the motor will run that much faster 10 hz/50hz = 20% increase in rpm (approximate due to slippage in the windings of a motor). The only real difference will be in spindle speeds. There should be nothing electrically that can't run on 60 hz current rather than 50 hz. The spindle speeds as per the chart will no longer be valid, but will be more of an approximation of the speeds.

I took another look at the motor nameplate:

Lstg = "leistung" or the power of the motor. This is given in VA (Volts x Amps = watts), given as 480 VA (watts). 480 /746 watts per HP = about 2/3 HP

"Spg" = "Spannung", or the "tension" , meaning voltage. Multiple voltage motor, but it will run on 220 volts, 3 phase.

Initially, when I saw how substantially the mill was built, I thought it would have a much higher motor rating. The mill looks like it would be a very rigid machine tool. It was probably something of a toolroom machine tool, so hopefully did not get too worn or beat. With only a 2/3 HP spindle motor, I would think the machine was way over-designed and probably held up well over the years.

The fact the mill was sold by a machine tool dealer in London, has me wondering: London, England or London, Ontario, Canada ? It's a milling machine with an interesting past. I recall occasionally seeing Fritz Werner mills in the used machine tool dealers on Centre Street in NYC in the 60's, when I was a kid browsing the used machine tool dealers' shops. I imagine there must have been a US agent who represented Fritz Werner, so how this machine with a dealer tag from outside the USA came to rest where it is now at would be an interesting story in itself.

Well, it's mine now. It's a good looking machine. It's smaller than a Bridgeport. The top of the neck comes up to 60". I've got a lot of cleaning to do but everything seems to move on it. I've also got to figure out how to power it.

The motor tag pic (from the seller) was from above was of the feed drive motor. The main motor is bigger and multi-speed.



A pic from where it sits currently. To soon be moved into my garage.


David

Thats a great looking mill Dave. Cant wait to see it running. Keep us posted on your progress.
Gill

Pretty cool looking mill, I like the way the head is mounted for some reason I cannot explain.

It's been a while but I finally have some notable updates.

To refresh, I got the mill not knowing if it'd run or not. It also needs 3phase 415V/50hz according to the tag. In the time since I got it, I've cleaned it up some and built a power system for it. I didn't even have 3 phase but with the aid of the internet and the good folks on the PM Transformer, Phase Converters and VFD forum I designed and assembled my power system. I'll spare you info on the power system but you're welcome to check out my thread about it here: http://www.practicalmachinist.com/v...-and-vfd/review-my-small-shop-circuit-313565/

I walked the mill into my shop (garage) and started with it like this.


The machine has a three speed motor and there are three more speeds on the neck of the machine giving a range of spindle speeds. The gears on the neck are changed with this handwheel.


The table is powered in the X and Y axes and the feed speeds are controlled with another gearbox and hand wheel on the back of the machine.


There's a nice tag on the neck to help you keep all the speeds straight.


Unfortunately, I have to ignore all these nice tags because my motor now runs at 60hz instead of 50hz which means everything is now 20% faster.

There's a bunch of access covers that can be removed to inspect gears and change belts. One of them provides a partial view to the large motor in this thing.


I cleaned up the table and any of the bare surfaces. I also attempted to clean the painted surfaces but they'll will always be a little grimy. Eventually, I bought a pallet jack off of Craigslist which made moving the mill much easier!



At some point before I got the machine the outer section of the Y axis lead screw got bent. After a bit of work I was able to get it removed and got it straighted.


A stud for one of the Y axis table clamps was broken which required removing the table to remove the broken section. So, off came the table.


I made a replacement stud and gave the table a good cleaning out before reinstalling it. As an aside, there's a mix of metric and US threaded fasteners on this machine which is kind of annoying.


There's a bunch of zerk fittings on the machine as well. Some were broken and I replaced them as well. I think all the zerks are supposed to be for grease. A few of them lube the table and I tried pumping oil in them to see how the table moved with oil. I prefer the oil for the table and will probably stick with that.

There's a coolant system built into machine with the reservoir in the base. I'm sure you can guess what it was like. I scraped all the sludge out of it and was rewarded by finding one of the caps for the oil fill ports. They're threaded little knurled knobs with an oil can symbol on them. Not something I'd easily find though I could replicate one sans the symbol if I had to.

The vise cleaned up pretty well too. It's a Starrett 6" basic milling vise but still works pretty well.


That brings me up to now. I still need to clean the base a little more and give the pump motor a once over. I'm planning to get it off the blocks and on to a different base soon as well.



I turned on my power system and threw the on switch but nothing happened. I next flipped the toggle switch on the it and a contactor closed. Still nothing. At this point disconnected the machine and dove into the electrical. More on that in a future post. I concluded my review of the electrical with a much better idea of how the machine worked. I also found that other that some fuses for the pump which had come apart due to age, the electrical system appeared to be in good working condition. With that I reassembled the electrical to give it another try.

My inspection of the electrical clued me in on how to run the machine. It turns out the red lever on the front of the table controls a good deal of the machine. It starts off in a retracted middle position. Pulling it out and up turns the spindle motor on. From that position, left or right will move the table in the X axis. Moving the lever down from the initial position activates the brake which I didn't even know the machine had until I studied the electrical.

So, with my new found knowledge I repowered the machine, flipped the start lever, turned the toggle switch on, and moved the red lever up. This time the machine jumped to life. Cool! Left or right on the lever gets the table moving as expected. The lever on the side of the table moves it in the Y axis direction. There's an interlock to prevent it moving on both axes at once. Changing the feed speed works as expected. All three speeds on the motor work. Reversing the spindle direction works. The brake even works and quickly too. As best I can tell, everything works well on the machine. Other than a quick temporary rattle from the motor when I start the machine, which I think is due to it running off a RPC, everything sounds good including the spindle. The spindle is a tad louder running CCW than CW but still seems fine either way. The spindle also has a powered downfeed but I'm not 100% sure how it works yet.

I need to get some new fuses for the coolant/oil pump which I haven't been able to test yet. I haven't made any chips with it yet but plan to soon! It's a little late so I'll get my electrical post up tomorrow.

I do have a question. The gear boxes run with oil in the bottom of them. What type of oil do you suggest I run in them? The little bit of oil in there didn't seem very thick like automotive gear oil but might not have been the correct weight anyway. Here's a view of one of the gearboxes if it helps.

That looks like a treasure you can use. It's too bad it's not R-8 but MT collets are still available. It looks like you could fabricate a slotting head too, since there appears to e a horizontal shaft coming out the front of the column.

The Zerk fittings were most likely intended for oil originally. That was pretty common during a certain era. It was equally common for uninformed persons to assume they were for grease, and pump a bunch of grease in where it shouldn't be! More than one set of spindle bearings has been ruined this way.

Andy

I believe there is a "push" type of oil gun sold for use on older Bridgeports having the zerk type fittings for lubing the sliding surfaces. Bridgeport had fitted zerk-type fittings to their mills for lubing the sliding surfaces, and plenty of people pushed grease into them. The "push" type oil gun fits up to the zerks, but has a plunger designed to handle fluid lubricants.

As to what oil to use in the gearcases: I'd recommend an ISO 46 or ISO 68 oil. A basic "DTE" (Dynamo, Turbine, Engine) oil such as DTE medium would be fine. I note you are in Florida, so possibly, the ISO 68 would be a better choice. If you buy some "Tractor Hydraulic Oil" at a place like Tractor Supply, it will come as either ISO 46 or ISO 68. Tractor Hydraulic Oil is designed to circulate in gearcases as well as be pumped to run hydraulics. It lubricates the gearing in tractor transmissions and rears (known as the "transaxle"). It will contain an anti-foam and anti-corrosion additive, but is otherwise a straight weight mineral based lube oil. The equivalent would be about an SAE 20 weight for the ISO 68. I run ISO 46 tractor hydraulic oil in the geared headstock of my old LeBlond lathe, and we used it in the geared drives on old machine tools on the railroad, such as a Brown & Sharpe gear-driven mill and a couple of geared head lathes.

Too heavy a gear lube in a machine tool gearcase will result in the heavier oil creating a lot of drag on the gearing, as well as possible slinging of the heavier oil out the breather vent. My old Yanmar tractor has a set of straight spur gears in its transmission, along with hypoids in the transaxle. I run tractor hydraulic fluid in the transaxle, which is also the sump or reservoir for the tractor's hydraulic system.

Another thing you could do is to add a little Lucas Oil Extender to the ISO 68 oil you fill the gearboxes with. This additive is mainly a "tackifier", adding a kind of stickiness to the oil. It causes the oil to cling to the gear teeth. The regular automotive gear oils are quite a bit heavier, and contain anti-wear and extreme pressure additives. These additives, particularly the extreme pressure (EP) additives contain compounds which can be harmful to some types of bronze bearings and bronze worm gears. The DTE or Tractor Hydraulic Oils do not contain any of these additives, so are fine for the purpose.

To this day, on certain worm gear drives, the gear manufacturers will specify using a heavy steam cylinder oil, even at a time when there is no significant demand for steam cylinder oil. This is because of the bad effects the EP additives in regular gear oils can have on bronze worm gears.

By way of an example of why a thinner oil may be the preferred lube for the mill's gearing: A buddy had a Ford Explorer with a manual transmission. The bearings in the tranny got to howling. He took the transmission apart, replaces the bearings, seals, and other worn parts. He then put the transmission back in the Explorer. The Ford specifications called for using Automatic Transmission Fluid (ATF) in the manual transmission. My buddy, being an engineer as well as a fine mechanic and longtime gearhead, decided ATF was too thin to run in a manual transmission. He filled it with regular gear lube, something like 90 weight. He then started driving the Explorer. The first morning he drove the Explorer to work at the powerplant, he started smelling gear lube. We are talking of a ride of maybe 15 miles. By the time he got into the powerplant, gear lube was dripping off the transmission casing. He said the tranny was starting to howl. He topped it up with lube and got the Explorer home again. In a matter of a few days, the transmission bearings were howling. My buddy rebuilt the transmission a second time. He said he'd learned his lesson about lubricants and OEM's specs. The Ford manual transmission was designed to really sling the lubricant around and get it into the bearings, based on a thinner lube like ATF. The switch to the thinner lube may have been done in the interest of fuel economy, and there was no going back to what would have been a "normal" heavy bodied gear lube. I've learned from my buddy's experience, and the lesson in it is that not all gearing should be lubricated with a heavy weight gear oil.

The Werner Mill has a light set of gearing, and the input gear is going to be turning fairly fast. A thin oil like ISO 46 or 68 would make sense for the application.

Joe,
You mentioned older BP's.
My brother's BP has a very stiff quill, he has removed the clamp segments and replaced the spring, nothing he can do short of disassembly seems to help. Is it possible that old dried grease is causing the problem?
I seem to remember that taking the quill out is only a 20 minute job, I think next time I'm there I'll ask if we might take it out.
Is there possibly some other reason it is so draggy? Casting distortion from over tightening bolts? I've owned several clones and none of them were like that, and tripped downfeeds will come up with light force on their own.

I appreciate the comments. I was thinking Hydraulic oil would work but wanted to be sure.

I'd read before about zerks one machines being meant for oil and about ruined spindle bearings bearings. My uncertainty comes from the fact that the zerk fitting that feeds the spindle actually has a small tag under it that says grease. That's had me guessing. I knew that one needed grease but was unsure of the others. I actually converted a grease gun over to use oil and have used it successfully on the other zerk fittings.

As mentioned above I went through some of the electrical to check the machine over and better understand how it works. There's a box on the right side of the machine where the control circuity can be found.


I pulled the panel and went through everything. Other than a little dirt most of it was fine except for one of the fuses. There's five fuses of a type I'd never seen before. It turns out they're a common fuse used in Europe called a "Milk Bottle" fuse due to the shape and McMaster sells them. Two of the fuses protect the control circuit and three protect the pump. One of the pump fuses had come apart but didn't seem blown. Hopefully, I'll get some fuses soon and be able to give the pump a try. There's also no bulb for the indicator light. It's a got a European base and I'm on the hunt for a replacement.



There's heavy cast iron cover than is removed to access the circuitry. On the back of it was a basic circuit diagram. The numbers on it correspond to the wire and part numbers.


Once I'd gone through the electrical I remade the chart in more modern symbols.


I also drew most of the electrical system while trying to understand how the machine worked. I realize that 99.9% of you won't find this useful but if someone else actually has one of these machines this may help them. I have a larger version of this image that I'll share with anyone who can make use of it. Just shoot me a PM.


Here's a quick video of it cutting some Aluminum with a 1/2" endmill. Ignore the poor wiring practice in the background. I need to find a box for the overload relay and get all the wires in conduit quickly.
https://youtu.be/brUEq6TVZyg

I just received a mill like the one above which is a Horizontal/Vertical Mill, a Fritz Werner No 5.160. Can someone tell me what the center switch does that is labeled Setup/Production. I can not see any change when it is switched from one to the other. Also does anyone have any documentation on this mill that they would share or sell.

Thanks,

Dennis

I scrapped the original 3phase motor & switch gear & replaced with single phase.
Try as I might any docs or manual re these machines are more difficult to find than rocking horse droppings.
Doesn't answer either of your queries but at least you know you are not alone....
Mark

Dcsims said:

I just received a mill like the one above which is a Horizontal/Vertical Mill, a Fritz Werner No 5.160. Can someone tell me what the center switch does that is labeled Setup/Production. I can not see any change when it is switched from one to the other. Also does anyone have any documentation on this mill that they would share or sell.

Thanks,

Dennis

Click to expand...

The Werner Milling Machines page has the most info on these machines I've found so far. The owner does sale manuals but doesn't have your machine listed. You may want to contact him and ask if he has a manual that isn't listed. It's also possible that he may have a manual for another machine that would be close to yours.

Can you post any pictures of your machine? I'd like to see it. My machine has a metal electrical diagram inside the cover of the electrical box on it. If yours does it may give a clue as to what the switch does on your machine. I'll take a look at it as well and see if I can determine anything.

old-biker-uk said:

I scrapped the original 3phase motor & switch gear & replaced with single phase.
Try as I might any docs or manual re these machines are more difficult to find than rocking horse droppings.
Doesn't answer either of your queries but at least you know you are not alone....
Mark

Click to expand...

Info of any kind about these machines is rare. I find it odd since they seemed to be a pretty large company with a lot of products.