What can you do with an Horizontal Mill?

I've sorted out my K&T mill (except for the coolant pump) and I'm ready to test it out on a project. My problem is I have no idea what this thing is good for. I've always used a BP mill for any milling work. I know what the mill does and how the controls all work but I can't think of a significant project that would put this machine to the test and develop my skill set on a H' mill. About all that I can think of is making some T nuts for the table. I could cut a keyway in shaft, or something obvious like that but I'd really like a more challenging project for the winter using this mill. So has anyone made something interesting and/or challenging on their H'mill?

Thanks

Gear cutting is one thing a horizontal is best for. If you ever used a helical cutter to finish a flat surface you would be impressed. Maybe you should get yourself a book like the "Cincinnati's treatise on milling" (http://www.amazon.com/Treatise-Milling-Machines/dp/B000H32ZCQ) It shows hundreds of examples. Most any machine shop practices book should give you lots of ideas.

I apologize for the indirect answer, but this question has come up on a number of occasions in the last few years- please do a search.

The direct answer is you can do a lot. A nice big horizontal is really capable in a lot of ways, you're mostly limited by your tooling. I don't have a K&T, instead a little production horizontal mill but I use it at least 2:1 over the bridgeport.

Regards,

Greg

What *can't* you do with a horizontal? Because those are the only milling
machines I have at home, I do everything on them. Oh, I've got a b'port M head
that fits one of them. But I never put it on.

Recent jobs: custom heat sink housing for a motorbike voltage regulator and
rectifier circuit, big pocket cut in aluminum with heat sink fins on the top surface.

Cutting a replacement gear for a seneca falls lathe.

Making a riser block for an aloris MA clone toolpost.

Reproducting a slew of tool holder blocks for a hardinge toolpost.

Turning a motorbike drum *with* wheel attached, to true up the
drum surface once the rim was laced on. Try doing *that* with a
bridgeport. Basically mill as giant gap-bed lathe.

Fabricating an overarm support for another horizontal milling machine.

No the machine does not have a quill. So drilling more than a few holes
is problematic. But I have a drill press for that....

Typical product

Here's a real-world example...

One of our products is built in a cast aluminum box 7.5" x 4.75" x 3" tall. A flat base is screwed to the open bottom. The sides have an angle of about 3°, as is typical for castings.

One 4.75"W x 3"H end has a flat 3"W x 1.5"H milled into it, perpendicular to the base, so the depth of cut increases as you get closer to the base.

This is very easy to do on the horizontal mill. Simple fixturing with excellent accuracy and repeatability.

- Leigh

Don't feel bad if you don't have an immediate use for it. We use ours for gear and spline cutting mostly. It is also very handy for squaring up the edges of big pieces of plate, and for drilling holes in the ends and edges of larger size parts that cannot be fit under the spindle of a vertical. But they are clumsy to use and almost necessitate having a tool and cutter grinder on hand to keep the (relatively expensive, relatively short life) cutters in good condition to produce good results. Dull cutters wear themselves out very quickly.

Back when the horizontal was our 'main' mill, 95% of the time, we had a universal angle head on it.

The nice thing about a horizontal is that one can machine two flat and parallel surfaces that are near the same distance as the maximum table travel without the flex/slop of the table becoming a factor. That is why I bought my Cincinnati #2 universal mill a few years back to machine this exact tool: Tools

If you want to run some tests etc / get a feel for it,......... get some lumps of metal and square them up.

Let's see.....we use our big horizontals for mainly slotting or slitting. The work is done with saw type cutters.

The small horizontals are used for about any other type of milling, end mills, fly cutters and face mills.

The biggest a 6" Lucas is used for everything. Milling, drilling, boring facing even turning.

The key is to imagine you don't have a vertical mill, you will find a way to do it on the horizontal.

Athack

While you are not doing the dozens of things it can ordinarily do, it also doubles as a horizontal boring mill and big swing lathe.

http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/antique-machinery-history/set-up-bore-apron-176541/

http://www.practicalmachinist.com/v...ontal-mill-lathe-180108/?posted=1#post1111025

J.O.

There are many common jobs where a horizontal excels, I'll leave those to others or to your research, easy to find.

Try thinking of your horizontal as a vertical laying down but the chips fall away from the workpiece.

Imagine trying to do the job Brett is doing in the photo above, on your vertical. Does what he's doing look awkward to you? Some of the guys who think so haven't tried it but to me, trying to do Bretts job on a light, (by comparison) vertical would be the hard way.

Edge drilling a flat piece. Clamp on table and power drill with the Y axis, dial in the next hole and repeat. Depth limited by the combination of drill length and Y travel but that is much deeper than my vertical mills or drill presses quill depth. Some of the part may be cantilevered well off the table, as long as sufficient is left for solid clamping.

I have an NMTB 50 to #4 MT tool holder with the wedge hole exposed, (and a shorter one with the wedge hole in the 50 taper), adapters down to #1 MT and a a good selection of MT drills standing vertical in a closed, rolling cart, 1/4" to 2-1/2". Quick change out, even a Jacobs chuck for things like center drills.

Large swing boring bar for big stuff.

Any large piece that you might turn as chuck or face plate work, short, not requiring a tail stock, like an auto bell housing, railroad wheel(!), large flat piece that requires several precisely located and bored holes using toolmakers buttons, like locating shaft bearing holes for mating gears, so that the pitch diameter mesh is perfect.

My largest lathe will swing a 17-1/2" part, my K&T 2H will swing a 40" diameter part. While shopping for a "30 or so inch" face plate for it, I got a great deal on a little 26", haven't needed bigger yet. These should be located with a 50 taper plug, (matches hole in faceplate) without driving flange, bolted to the spindle, (my K&T has a 4" bolt circle, 5/8-11), and driven by the spindle lugs in slots milled in the back of the face plate.

To complete your "T-lathe", you can just clamp a tool holder to the table and turn at the bottom but that limits your options.
Build a sturdy tool post with heavy bolt down base for the table, tall enough to reach the center of your spindle when the table is low, allowing a longer part to swing partially over the table when useful. Mount a lathe compound on it and turn tapers inside or out, grooving, some ratios for threading even, especially if you are making both mating parts. Other than tapers, the X & Y axes provide good power feed selection for facing and turning. My 2H is a universal, can power feed tapers to 48° with the X.

Basically anything that can be done on a lathe as face plate work but bigger and easier, because you are standing right in front, best "seat" in the house. Tip: bore the plug to accept various diameter pin projections to be turned as needed, (larger or smaller than the pin/bore diameter), threads at the bottom can be useful. Sometimes it's nice to prepare the part with a centering hole or use an existing one, to make quick yet precise mounting easy and transfers between other machines accurate. Back to that train wheel, turn the centering projection to match the axle diameter.

Line boring by clamping the part to the table and supporting the boring bar in a tool holder, (say 2"), the other end in the arbor support by turning the outboard end to accept a standard arbor bearing sleeve. Thread and mill a keyway in the end of the bar to secure the bearing sleeve. Edit: like John so well illustrates in the post he made while I was composing an epic....

Trepan large diameter discs and rings from plate stock and open or closed end cylinders from weldments.

Set up a rotary table and mill cooling fins around a large diameter at great metal removal rates, and a bunch of other things......

Consider yourself lucky. Lots of guys never discover, (or accept) these truths and try to adapt what is essentially a pocket cutting tool, to do real milling jobs. And really, it's kind of a toss up on tiny stuff but if you need to remove much metal, on big parts, accurately with minimum vibration and tool marks, if you have a little room for a very versatile machine, limited only by your imagination, for far less investment per pound of metal removed and time spent.....

Keep that light vertical though, to mill the worm paths in an automatic transmision valve body, drill small holes if you don't have a drill press... or?...

Like Greg said above, do a search and later, report back with your personal discoveries.

Bob

I make dies for tubing benders with mine I have a powered rotary table and use the corner of a big shell mill to hog out radii in 4 inch thick steel billits. I can do them in one turn, try that on a lathe you would be there all day and you would have to hold the darn thing, my mill is like a vtl with powered tooling. I use my K&T more than any other mill in my shop, I have a Cincinnatti but it is more of a tracktor than a ferarii like the K&T. Once you start using it be carefull when you go back to the BP you will try and take the same cuts with it that you take with the K&T and you will stop the little mill dead.

johnoder said:

While you are not doing the dozens of things it can ordinarily do, it also doubles as a horizontal boring mill and big swing lathe.

Click to expand...

And if it's a Deckel FP2 or larger, it even has a moving quill like a HBM..

I think that using a horizontal is generally avoided because they are slow to set up. Even milling a keyway is slow, by the time you find an arbor, install the thing (they're heavy) take all the spacing collars off, fastidiously clean them like an obsessive-compulsive, reassemble, slide the overarm out, put the outboard support on, tighten the nut, oil the running bushing, then find center cranking the massive table back and forth. That is why they don't 'win out' over vertical mills.

And tool changing is a PITA and is slow to do, and you cannot see what you are doing when you are drilling, while standing in the normal operator position.

I don't look for projects for mine, but I don't hesitate to use it for things that it does the easiest and best. Same applies to using the shaper. But running a face mill in the horizontal spindle while edge milling plates is a super sweet. Doesn't matter if they are flame cut nasty shit or not, it just purrs along through it.

The set up problem is a valid one I solved that by buying a few of them and leaving them set up, they are cheap everyone should own at least one.

"...Even milling a keyway is slow,"

One word: woodruff key cutter.



For small shafts, the shaft goes in the vise, the woodruff cutter
goes in the 5C collet, and the thing's done in minutes.

Which would do a better job at cutting a 3/16 inch wide keyway
in a shaft - 3/16 end mill, or 3/16 wide woodruff cutter?

Oh, and too bad about that ugly handle on the ugly green machine up there....



Round handles, much better.

HuFlungDung said:

I think that using a horizontal is generally avoided because they are slow to set up. Even milling a keyway is slow, by the time you find an arbor, install the thing (they're heavy) take all the spacing collars off, fastidiously clean them like an obsessive-compulsive, reassemble, slide the overarm out, put the outboard support on, tighten the nut, oil the running bushing, then find center cranking the massive table back and forth. That is why they don't 'win out' over vertical mills.

And tool changing is a PITA and is slow to do, and you cannot see what you are doing when you are drilling, while standing in the normal operator position.

I don't look for projects for mine, but I don't hesitate to use it for things that it does the easiest and best. Same applies to using the shaper. But running a face mill in the horizontal spindle while edge milling plates is a super sweet. Doesn't matter if they are flame cut nasty shit or not, it just purrs along through it.

Click to expand...

Not to be argumentative but Hu says,..."generally avoided because they are slow to set up".... then goes on to use one of the few places where a vertical excels, pocket work, like end milling a keyway.

Personally, I never use a vertical to mill a keyway, inless the shaft can't have the overrun of a large diameter mill cutter and then I cringe as I carefully feed that fragile 1/8" diameter end mill, praying I don't snap it off. For most keyways, I use my smaller U.S. Machine Tools horizontal hand mill, super quick set-up and usually just wipe the table and drop the shaft in the center T-slot with a couple of clamps. Set the cutter full depth and give the lever feed X a sturdy pull, seconds in the cut.

Obsessive-compulsive? First, why would you pull all the spacers off? I almost never position a cutter against the shoulder of the arbor and it ain't high tech placing the cutter close to the center, both of my horizontals have movable X axis.

"slide the overarm out, put the outboard support on, tighten the nut, oil the running bushing, then find center cranking the massive table back and forth." say what?
First, why'd you pull the arbor support off and crank the over arm(s) back, need the excersize?

My K&T has oil reservoirs in the arbor support so forget that oiling stuff and then "find center"?
what, you just poke that little end mill in anywhere, close enough? "Heavy table?" Yup, I've had it off but right now it's on and moves smooth as glass, little effort on the crank.

"That is why they don't 'win out' over vertical mills." like I said above, "say what?"

Bob

A couple of setups. In the first 2 I'm machining some hook breeches for a double flint shotgun. By using a small indexing table I can get all the angles with out tearing anything down. The 3rd is a setup to mill octagon barrels from round. I would agree that setup time can be slower for one time jobs. To me they shine when you can set them up for a run of parts. My little #2 has a feature where it can be setup to rapid traverse into the part & make a cut & rapid back out for a new part. I can have someone run a 100 of something & basically just bolt parts in & trip the feed lever.

http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=29714&stc=1&d=1293897448

http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=29715&stc=1&d=1293897498

http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=29716&stc=1&d=1293897561

Only your imagination is the limit. John Oder shows that.

I really would like one for cutting keyways full length in shafts.

Also they are great for squaring up material. Especially the round center burn-outs. Some people think that those are scrap after they get a ring cut out.

I've made a lot of parts from them.

Get some old metal and have at it.

Make you some V-blocks or something.

JAckal