Machinery leveling feet most suited to which machine?

Hi all,

I recently picked up a package of 4 nice 5" machinery levelling feet. They are marked Gislaved, and are a hard rubber with threaded rods that go through them. I wasn't particularly looking for these, but they were a good price so I bought them. My question is, which machine are these most suited to go under? I have a van Norman 26 mill, a Celtic 14 lathe (which only has 4 mount holes for levelling feet, not 6), and a brown and Sharpe 618 micromaster surface grinder.

Which machine potentially benefits most from this type of feet? All of the machines would benefit from the additional height...

Thanks in advance,

Lee



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Those would be best suited for my Lagun.

Send them to me.

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Rubber? Even hard rubber?

Certainly not good for any lathe that is going to be "leveled". I mean, with lathe work and leveling we are talking ten thousandths. At that level, cast iron behaves like rubber. Real rubber will be much, much worse. I have enough experience with lathe leveling so that I would not dream of putting any rubber or other readily compressible material in the support system for a lathe. No rubber, not even hard rubber. No wood. No plastic. CI would be best with steel as a second choice. That's my opinion and I am sticking to it.

A surface grinder also certainly works in tenths. But just how level does it need to be? I mean, if a surface grinder is one degree off level, just how much difference does that make when grinding a flat surface? I don't know. I do know that there is no twist involved as in a lathe. Or at least, any errors from a twist will be at lease an order of magnitude smaller than a similar twist in a lathe's ways.

The mill? My mill is sitting on a sloping cement floor with no attempt to level it. But mills tend to work down to thousandths or perhaps half that. Not many mills can claim ten thousandth accuracy. And again, the twist thing is not very important here as in the surface grinder. Their geometries are similar. So what good would they do there? Again, I don't know.

Perhaps the best use for them may be under the legs of your work bench. For any of those machines, a set of 1/2" or 3/4" bolts, preferably high grade ones, would be much better as leveling feet. They should rest on solid metal (steel?) pads that are fastened down to a single spot on a concrete floor with no chance of moving about and the feet themselves should be constrained to sit on one and only one spot on those steel pads. Nothing moves and all the substances involved should exhibit as little change under compression as possible.

I'd put them under the grinder.

I have another leading brand, Sunnex, under my Deckel CNC mill. They're orange, so it's like the mill has racing stripes. Otherwise, I don't think they make much difference to the mill or how it runs, given that it is sitting on a concrete slab and not shaking anybody's electron microscope in the next room .

I have similar style feet under both my mills. Not so much to level them as to give them a more solid footing.

My floor is both not level and not flat. When putting machine bases directly on the slab, there can be high spots in the middle of the machine that act as pivot points.

Without feet, My FP2NC would sit on 3 points, which 3 would depend on table location causing the machine to rock side to side. My FP1 would rotate under heavy cuts.

Adding feet such as you have allowed me to move the contact points out to the extent of the machine base and more evenly distribute the weight between the corners. No more shifting CNC or dancing FP1. The fact that the machines are level now is a bonus.

Teryk

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That is a lot of rubber in that foot. I'd try and find a catalog number and see how much weight they're rated for. They may not be suited for much more than a workbench.