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Grinding the top of a mill table?

DocsMachine

Titanium
Joined
Jan 8, 2005
Location
Southcentral, AK
A friend of mine is making a trip from Alaska (where I am) down to California, and I'm currently making arrangements to have him deliver and then pick back up a couple of parts at Carr's shop in Vancouver, to have them ground.

The important one is the bed of my Springfield lathe, which is not hugely badly worn, but enough so I'd like to have the work done. The other two are the top casting and ram of an old Stockbridge shaper (kind of a waste of money but it's either that or throw the thing away) and the table and saddle of my Nichols mill, which is worn very badly and ruins the accuracy and finish of this otherwise nearly perfect machine.

One of the other things I was thinking about was having the top surface of the table of my Exacto mill done:

exacto98.jpg


exacto99.jpg


I know a lot of that damage can't be erased with a pass through the grinder, it's just too deep. But I think 10-15 thou off the top would clean it up considerably, and get rid of the vast majority of just the little dits and dings and nicks that cover the whole dang thing.

What do you think? Should I bother? I realize it'd be mostly cosmetic, but on the other hand, just a few thou off the top shouldn't cause any warpage or springing as stresses are relieved, should it?

The truck and trailer are already making the trip, and I don't necessarily 'need' the machine for the next month or two, so I suppose my question is, is there any real drawback to doing this? (I also wanted to get the top surface of the Nichols table done- would I be risking warpage from released strains?)

Doc.
 
It's your dime. It will be only cosmetic in any case. Even if you grind these items, they still won't be straight and flat. You will still have to scrape them in.
 
I take a flat file to such tops and follow with a flat Norton hone (or the like) to make flat all the bugs and nicks so parts can get no damage.

qt:[would I be risking warpage from released strains?)

Correction ..If Cash says it will bow ..then go with that..He knows best..*post #5

(I had first said/posted grind .015/.020 would be Ok but Cash has more knowledge on such that I..)
 
Agree on if you grind the table top that it will bow, then you will need to grind/scrape the ways.

Removing the work hardened top from years of use will release stress and you have the potential to add additional work to your project.
 
Shane Carr has a Rockford Shaper he could he could cut the top of mill first, top and bottom before grinding. He also has straight-edges, a King-Way and Biax Scrapers. I would send the mill saddle too and gib. He could rebuild it for you. He is a really good rebuilder. He could also weld up the T-Slots if you wanted him too. Rich

Picture of Shane's Shop. He also has taken 4 scraping classes. 2 were mine. He in my opinion is the most well rounded rebuilder I know. He programs CNC, Runs CNC, Welds, is Journeyman Machinist, Rigger, Trucker, Great Scraper who can scrape 40PPI, builds small steam trains, rebuilds all sorts of thing from RR wheels to Monarch EE Lathes, etc. Collects vintage cars and trucks, owns and operates his own company.
Carr's Machining Ltd. | Machining, Welding, Fabricating & Balancing
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its mostly cosmetic and usually mill table never trusted to be perfectly flat. trim blocks used and trim blocks bolted on table, mill a .001 off trim blocks then you know blocks are at same height, can confirm with indicator if needed.
.
take ground steel block and use "Stikit" adhesive sanding paper to ground block and blue table and use the "lapping block" with coarse sandpaper. sure wont get deep marks but it usually will look better
.
can use Stikit paper on a wood hand plane assuming its ground flat too for use at lapping
 
Hi Doc
Send down the tables and we’ll see what happens. Once here we can get all kinds of advice on how to go about what would be the best way to get the job done.
Collector Shane
 
Is the mill not capable of doing the work you're putting on it? Are you having a problem holding tolerances? May be a solution searching for a problem...
 








 
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