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Cincinatti #2 MI Universal Horizontal Mill Repair

Themanualguy

Aluminum
Joined
Aug 14, 2014
Location
Wollongong, Australia
G'day Gents, I posted a thread about a cincinnati #2 vs #3 to see if the parts were interchangable with the answer, most probably not. Some items have proven to fit.
During that thread I mentioned about a broken "bracket under saddle" on the right hand side of the miller as you look at it straight on. A splined shaft comes out of the column and transmits drive to the table screw via this "bracket". This is why I started this thread, to show others how I fixed the issue, how I fix other issues I come across and also what I will end up doing with the machine once its back running again.

So, I run a small, all manual job shop focused mainly on producing new parts for heavy industrial hydraulic cylinders, steel mill equipment, mining machinery, generally fluid transfer and power transmission work. My work is mainly 1 or 2 pieces, made from plate steel profiles, bar stock and the occasional weldment. I also do some repair work on things such as workrolls for a Galvanising line and some hydraulic cylinder rebuild work.

The decision to add the cincinatti mill to my existing two turret mills was to handle the heavier workpeices I run into. Typically heavy profiles and large castings for water valves etc.

The machine came up locally for $1500, in the suburb over, being sold by a mechanic who bought it, but was disappointed when it didn't "drill like a drill press."

After some inspection of the machine I found it to have a broken casting underneath the saddle. Using this I bargained him down to $1000, I could of gotten cheaper probably but he was more interested in sending the machine back to the guy he bought it off a week or so earlier because he didn't know about the broken casting. So $1000 was the price in which he would let me take it.

This is the machine when I went to look at it when my mate James.
Imgur: The magic of the Internet

Imgur: The magic of the Internet
 
I arranged to have the machine picked up and hoped the truck driver would call me when he was on his way to my shop, but he did not and so dropped the machine off still sitting on the pallet. I cursed it at first because I knew it would be a bear of a job getting the 2.3 Ton miller off the pallet.
I borrowed a pallet jack from work and rolled it in to my shop on Christmas day.
The day after, I was able to lift it off using my gantry crane.

Imgur: The magic of the Internet

Imgur: The magic of the Internet

And finally sitting in its correct position and spun around. Took me 10 minutes to rotate it 180 degrees with a long pinch bar, but I guess that's the perk of being 26 years old. A wise man would've spun the pallet around with the pallet jack and rolled her in ;) As an old boilermaker used to tell me, being smart is cool, being talented is great but sometimes there just isn't any substitute for brute force and ignorance ;)

Imgur: The magic of the Internet

After all that, leaving it on the pallet was a pretty good idea after all.

The same day I borrowed the pallet jack from work, I grabbed the dividing head and overarm supports from our No. 3 Dial Type Cincinatti Mill at work, that is beyond repair, and I just use it to pilfer parts off it now. I also got ALL the 50 taper arbors for the machine from work (fab shop now set up in an old machine shop built in the 50's to service our now closed down tin plate mill). The #3 miller is destined to be broken up into pieces and dumped into the Basic Oxygen Furnace at work, but I told the boys to leave it there a few years while I fix my cincinatti #2, just in the off chance any parts are interchangable, but John Oder was able to point out that it is highly unlikely, but for now it can stay there, you can't see it from my house so it doesn't bother me.
 
The overarm supports I grabbed from the tin house were both BLACK with grime from sitting in these large, drafty mill buildings, along with the boys grinding and oxy cutting near by.

I've cleaned them up with a soak in kerosene, and have removed the bushes so I can re-make them from LG2 bronze (leaded gun metal bronze) unless another flavour of bronze would be more suitable? This is for the use of horizontal mill arbors with side and face cutters, slab mills, slitting saws etc.

Imgur: The magic of the Internet

The dividing head is a much larger project, and having just bought a brand new BS2 Differential dividing head for an urgent spline shaft I had to cut (53 teeth hence the need for differential) this other one I got from the tin house can wait a while.

My apologies for the blurry photo, it was just on sunset, 2 days after christmas and we had just changed a 5 ton cylinder, pretty deep in the hot strip mill and I wasn't hanging around for nice photos ;)
Imgur: The magic of the Internet

The miller has sat most of this year waiting for me to work on it, as I have been so busy and have not had a chance to work on it, but I needed it recently for a job so had to get her at least running so I could get this job done.

I was, however, buying bargains when they came up for arbors and cutters.
This was quite a nice score.

Imgur: The magic of the Internet

Imgur: The magic of the Internet

Imgur: The magic of the Internet

https://imgur.com/bxNEuGQ

I even found an old cabinet in the tin house that was used by the machine shop planners of the day for the machine shop to organise their work, or any larger work that went to the PSM (plate and strip mills machine shop, with the monster machines)

So a bit of history in there, labelled PSM or Tin House on the shelves, makes ya think of old (better?) times when we actually made shit in the western world.

This is the job I needed the cincinatti for, as using an angle plate on my turret mills would not have been anywhere near as much fun ;)

https://imgur.com/3EbtK4L

After the cincinatti for getting the sides finished, it went to the lathes and turret mills for drilling and tapping etc.

https://imgur.com/PSI6C68

https://imgur.com/EubQ7Av

This type of work does me just fine on my manual machines.

Now the job is done, I want to get the miller working correctly before the next job like that one.
 
The broken bracket, and the accompanying bent cross feed screw, made it move very erratically in the Y axis when used with rapid. Along with a crunched cross feed screw, it had major backlash (like almost 6-8mm).

I was able to re-use a Y axis gib lock from the No.3 miller at work, and reamed a new taper pin hole for a fresh taper pin. The lock allowed me to lock the saddle and get the job done, but she wasn't pretty ;)

Still, the plates squared up nicely, and I was able to hold size fairly easy with a dial indicator on the saddle.

This is the cross feed screw bearing when I begun pulling it apart.

Imgur: The magic of the Internet

This is the bracket, and from where I needed to remove it.

Imgur: The magic of the Internet

Imgur: The magic of the Internet

Imgur: The magic of the Internet

Imgur: The magic of the Internet

https://imgur.com/Dwo106c

https://imgur.com/tiwOcEp

This thread is going to basically start with how I re-make this item from blocks and plate profiles, welded together. I will be making drawings, and uploading them so anyone else with this issue can repair theirs.

Along the way, we will rebuild parts of this machine to get it running, install a DRO and then get her cutting metal again. I will be posting photos all along the way.
 
The bent cross feed screw I was able to salvage as the bend was very localised, and I put it in one of my lathes, heated the area and bent it back, run out is within 20 thou at the very end so I'm satisfied with that. The thread is not bent at all, the bend was very localised in the smallest section diameter near the bearing diameters.

This mitre gear that transfers drive from the spline shaft, up vertically into the saddle to drive the table screw, needs some build up where the cylindrical roller bearing rides on it (or should I say the mitre gear runs inside the bearing)

I have a customer who is a chrome shop, they may be able to build up a bit of chrome on the diameter after I pre-grind the OD in my universal ID/OD grinder. Then chrome, and then I can finish grind to size to match a new cylindrical roller bearing.

Imgur: The magic of the Internet

This diameter is worn about 15-25 thou, which I may be able to get them to chrome up hopefully for a case of beer.

Imgur: The magic of the Internet
 
Re photos of bracket

Before charging ahead down the new road....

Might it be smart to see if the thing could be fixed by machining off "plate" that is busted and putting on a steel plate that isn't busted?

Maintaining dimensions of course.

Any beef there to tap holes into? 10mm / 3/8 flat head socket heads can really hang on to stuff in suitable numbers
 
There is a very good chance that could work! I'm having a look now, seems like some 32mm plate (1.25") would be sufficient to use and mill down to 29.5mm thickness for the new plate (the "plate" section of the casting is 29.5mm above a flat section milled off the casting to provide a flat starting point to build up from)

I know that might be hard to understand from reading it, I will post back soon with a plan!
 
So after looking and thinking, I decided that there wasn’t enough meat to repair this item by drilling and tapping and bolting a new plate to it.

I’ve made some drawings of this part, profile cutting drawing, fabrication drawing and some machining drawings.

I’ll upload them soon.

Flame cut materials are in, just gotta finish off my 6” slotter rebuild first before starting this other job, as between running my machine shop and working at the steel mill I don’t have much time to pull apart too
Many machines at the moment!
 








 
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