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myford compatible milling slide

Dave123

Aluminum
Joined
Jan 13, 2019
Any one had exposure to the vertical milling slides that are offered on Ebay, these are not the Myford manufactured, the adds say they are made in India. The price seem attractive, just wondering about the quality?

Dave
 
Likely this is going to become a locked thread since it's about home shop equipment and size. So before that happens a milling attachment is at best a work around to a real mill. They can work if the parts are small enough, but feeds and depths of cut are by necessity very light due to the flexibility of the whole set up. And I've had little luck with anything made in India. Enough so there on my restricted "do not buy list". Cutting corners on machine tools cutting tools and accessories simply because of a low price DOES NOT WORK. Almost no one at the hobby level ever seems to believe that, so my guess is you'll have to sooner or later figure that one out for yourself. If you've got a Myford then eat the cost and buy one of there's with some hope of it working within your expectations. An attractive price always means one or multiple items were skipped or ignored to meet that low price.
 
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Even the original Myford manufactured milling slides are not at all rigid, although they were nicely finished. Neanderthal mach has it right; don't waste your time and money trying to mill on a Myford 7. They were only produced for an era when UK model engineeers had to manage with one machine tool in a very limited space.
 
Back in the 1970's, I made several trips to London and bought some Myford items from Buck and Ryan to use on my Hardinge 7" lathe. I have both the swivelling and the plain vertical slides. I used one of them once. I have real milling machines, so the milling attachments just sit on a shelf. I think the only way you can buy genuine English-made Myford tooling now is to find old stuff like mine. Someone may own the name, but I think the original factory is gone.

I have had some awful junk come from India sellers on eBay and Amazon, but a few items were OK. Amazon and eBay will get you a refund, so the main risk is time wasted.

Larry
 
Good morning all.


As said, avoid the cheap stuff from India & the like, it's simply not worth the hassle. Many years ago I had a Boxford lathe, which is slightly larger than the Myford, & more industrial. I bought a cheapo vertical slide, & it was frankly useless. Then someone lent me a Myford vertical slide, & the difference was immediately noticable.
Howwever, as Billmac says, milling on something like a Myford is pretty much a waste of time & money.

Myford is now owned by RDG Tools who sell a lot of stuff on eBay over here. They're stuff is generally ok, & I note they do a vertical slide for the Myford. I don't know if they ship overseas.
Or look out for a genuine Myford one. They come up over here quite regularly on eBay etc, but again shipping might be an issue.


Cheers.


Stew.
 
Even the original Myford manufactured milling slides are not at all rigid, although they were nicely finished. Neanderthal mach has it right; don't waste your time and money trying to mill on a Myford 7. They were only produced for an era when UK model engineeers had to manage with one machine tool in a very limited space.
I'll go one better than that-my very first milling was with a Myford vertical slide mounted on a round bed Drummond!
 
I grew up milling on a ML7 with a original vertical slide, the posh dual axis swively one. Honestly, its one of the few things were you can say a mill drill is a upgrade. God was that mill drill a godsend till i got the Bridgeport. Because whilst people bash bridge-ports as being flexible, its fair to say they previously did not have a well worn ML& even with a relatively pristine vertical original slide!

Im all for retrofits too, but adding ball screws and servos even would definitely not make it a HMC either!
 








 
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