DocsMachine
Titanium
- Joined
- Jan 8, 2005
- Location
- Southcentral, AK
Going along with the thread on rebuilding the Nichols Horizontal Mill, one of the fun accessories for that machine was a vertical head.
After I got the machine up and running, I started keeping my eyes open for one, mainly on eBay. I had a chance for one, complete with the factory drive adapter (more on that in a moment) and the factory collet kit and drawbar, and a full set of 4NS collets, for just $700, but I missed it, being, at the time, about $689 short.
I eventually found one- back in 2013- for something like $225, and at some point after that- a year?- I found the drive adapter for like $200. Wasn't too worried about the collet kit- 4NS is pretty rare, and only went up to I think 5/8". Using an ER collet holder isn't as big an issue for the vertical head as it is on the horizontal spindle- it eats up a lot of very limited room horizontally, but you have a lot more knee travel so it's not as big a thing.
A few years later, I picked up a set of rare Lindberg NMTB-40 collets, which at least my set goes up to 3/4", so that's a better route anyway.
Now, what happened was, I picked this up during the latter half of 2013, which was about the same time I initially picked up my big Springfield lathe. It was late in the summer, and I wanted to get what I could, done outdoors (paint stripping and the like) and start moving the lathe (or parts thereof) indoors before the snow flew. AND... I still wasn't fully happy with the Nichols thanks to its badly worn table. I thought putting a vertical head on it was almost a waste of time, at least until I could get it all properly repaired.
So all I did was dismantle the head, and clean and inspect it, then set it aside to focus on the Springfield. These pics, therefore, are from 2013.
The Nichols vertical head has essentially the same spindle as the horizontal, an NMTB-40, with four spots for "drive screws", or Allen bolts which act as driving lugs for the toolholder.
To mount it, the machine has to have a "T-slot ring", which mine just happened to have. Four bolts with nuts, and the thing can rotate to basically any position.
There's degree markings around the outside of the mounting flange, so you can set the angle.
To start on the disassembly, there's this top... dust cap/spindle guard thingy held on by three countersunk screws:
Remove those, and the cap comes off, but it's not obvious where to go from here.
So for the moment we switch back to the front cover, which is just a metal disc (brass, I think?) retained by this wire snap ring.
The cover, incidentally, had originally been nickel-plated, and had the company name, lube specs and other info silkscreened on it. All of that had been wiped off of mine somehow, but somewhere around here, I have an image taken off a helpfully-straight-shot photograph of another Nichols head from eBay years ago, where I redrew the artwork.
I may have the plate replated, or maybe mill one from aluminum, not sure. It's not much more than a dust cover, so there's options.
Anyway, once I had that snap ring off, I opened up the main gear case- I'm not sure what I'd been expecting, but it wasn't this:
No wonder it was so cheap.
Turns out the grease did, actually, kind of look fibrous- that is, that was kind of how it was supposed to look. When I posted about this head here, a couple regulars traced the originally-specced "Andok C" through a couple of iterations to a still-available Mobilgrease flavor. But it was mentioned that one of those early ones was "about the consistency of shoe polish".
Presumably they want a grease that holds together while the vertical gear picks it up and flings it at the upper horizontal gear, and doesn't ooze out any significant oil in the meantime.
Anyway, worse than the grease itself, were the bits floating in it:
This was the... most intact, I guess, bit... Probably a shim for the upper bearing.
After scooping some of that gunk out, I saw that the top 'cap' is just pressed in, so I popped that off with a hammer and an aluminum drift.
That revealed a threaded adjustment collar at the top, locked in place with a setscrew.
Popping that off revealed a... kind of crusty and burnt bearing.
I think that grease zerk feeds that bearing- and probably the upper gear- and somebody probably wasn't Johnny-on-the-spot with the grease gun. The original front plate also says not to run the head at top speed- it actually runs faster than the horizontal spindle, something like 4:3, which is what, about 30% faster? And some previous user may have tried running it wide open- or on a high-speed spindle- for too long, and it scorched the bearing.
Anyway, whatever the cause, after that, the whole spindle assembly pops out with a little persuasion from a soft hammer.
And after that, the rear drive gear can be tapped out of it's support bearing, again with a light hammer and a soft drift.
Once I had everything washed out with solvent, I found all this debris, which has to be at least two shims. I'll likely have to machine my own to replace them, unless I can find a supplier of the right size of shim washers.
And that's it. That's all there is to it. I'll need to replace both the upper and lower bearings- the upper is obviously trashed, but the lower is well-used too, just like the original spindle bearings. Fortunately, it doesn't look like the bearing overheating seems to have affected the upper gear too much, but I may very well have to keep a close eye on it anyway, at least for a while. Fortunately it's easy to see by simply removing the front cover.
Now, that's all back in 2013. At some point, I'll assume shortly thereafter, I painted the main housing and ordered the upper bearing and race, but never got the lower- likely because of cost. But I ordered one last week and it just came in today, so if I get a chance, I want to try and get this thing back together this weekend. The only tricky part is going to be that shim...
Doc.
After I got the machine up and running, I started keeping my eyes open for one, mainly on eBay. I had a chance for one, complete with the factory drive adapter (more on that in a moment) and the factory collet kit and drawbar, and a full set of 4NS collets, for just $700, but I missed it, being, at the time, about $689 short.
I eventually found one- back in 2013- for something like $225, and at some point after that- a year?- I found the drive adapter for like $200. Wasn't too worried about the collet kit- 4NS is pretty rare, and only went up to I think 5/8". Using an ER collet holder isn't as big an issue for the vertical head as it is on the horizontal spindle- it eats up a lot of very limited room horizontally, but you have a lot more knee travel so it's not as big a thing.
A few years later, I picked up a set of rare Lindberg NMTB-40 collets, which at least my set goes up to 3/4", so that's a better route anyway.
Now, what happened was, I picked this up during the latter half of 2013, which was about the same time I initially picked up my big Springfield lathe. It was late in the summer, and I wanted to get what I could, done outdoors (paint stripping and the like) and start moving the lathe (or parts thereof) indoors before the snow flew. AND... I still wasn't fully happy with the Nichols thanks to its badly worn table. I thought putting a vertical head on it was almost a waste of time, at least until I could get it all properly repaired.
So all I did was dismantle the head, and clean and inspect it, then set it aside to focus on the Springfield. These pics, therefore, are from 2013.
The Nichols vertical head has essentially the same spindle as the horizontal, an NMTB-40, with four spots for "drive screws", or Allen bolts which act as driving lugs for the toolholder.
To mount it, the machine has to have a "T-slot ring", which mine just happened to have. Four bolts with nuts, and the thing can rotate to basically any position.
There's degree markings around the outside of the mounting flange, so you can set the angle.
To start on the disassembly, there's this top... dust cap/spindle guard thingy held on by three countersunk screws:
Remove those, and the cap comes off, but it's not obvious where to go from here.
So for the moment we switch back to the front cover, which is just a metal disc (brass, I think?) retained by this wire snap ring.
The cover, incidentally, had originally been nickel-plated, and had the company name, lube specs and other info silkscreened on it. All of that had been wiped off of mine somehow, but somewhere around here, I have an image taken off a helpfully-straight-shot photograph of another Nichols head from eBay years ago, where I redrew the artwork.
I may have the plate replated, or maybe mill one from aluminum, not sure. It's not much more than a dust cover, so there's options.
Anyway, once I had that snap ring off, I opened up the main gear case- I'm not sure what I'd been expecting, but it wasn't this:
No wonder it was so cheap.
Turns out the grease did, actually, kind of look fibrous- that is, that was kind of how it was supposed to look. When I posted about this head here, a couple regulars traced the originally-specced "Andok C" through a couple of iterations to a still-available Mobilgrease flavor. But it was mentioned that one of those early ones was "about the consistency of shoe polish".
Presumably they want a grease that holds together while the vertical gear picks it up and flings it at the upper horizontal gear, and doesn't ooze out any significant oil in the meantime.
Anyway, worse than the grease itself, were the bits floating in it:
This was the... most intact, I guess, bit... Probably a shim for the upper bearing.
After scooping some of that gunk out, I saw that the top 'cap' is just pressed in, so I popped that off with a hammer and an aluminum drift.
That revealed a threaded adjustment collar at the top, locked in place with a setscrew.
Popping that off revealed a... kind of crusty and burnt bearing.
I think that grease zerk feeds that bearing- and probably the upper gear- and somebody probably wasn't Johnny-on-the-spot with the grease gun. The original front plate also says not to run the head at top speed- it actually runs faster than the horizontal spindle, something like 4:3, which is what, about 30% faster? And some previous user may have tried running it wide open- or on a high-speed spindle- for too long, and it scorched the bearing.
Anyway, whatever the cause, after that, the whole spindle assembly pops out with a little persuasion from a soft hammer.
And after that, the rear drive gear can be tapped out of it's support bearing, again with a light hammer and a soft drift.
Once I had everything washed out with solvent, I found all this debris, which has to be at least two shims. I'll likely have to machine my own to replace them, unless I can find a supplier of the right size of shim washers.
And that's it. That's all there is to it. I'll need to replace both the upper and lower bearings- the upper is obviously trashed, but the lower is well-used too, just like the original spindle bearings. Fortunately, it doesn't look like the bearing overheating seems to have affected the upper gear too much, but I may very well have to keep a close eye on it anyway, at least for a while. Fortunately it's easy to see by simply removing the front cover.
Now, that's all back in 2013. At some point, I'll assume shortly thereafter, I painted the main housing and ordered the upper bearing and race, but never got the lower- likely because of cost. But I ordered one last week and it just came in today, so if I get a chance, I want to try and get this thing back together this weekend. The only tricky part is going to be that shim...
Doc.
been hunting for one to no avail/ I’ll get around to making one eventually. Contemplated an over arm m-head instead but not sure. Also need to make the x axis half nut that of course was missing as well.
