Building a vertical mill from industrial scrap

[Music] [Music] [Music] in the previous video i showed you how i built a metal lathe from industrial scrap now i have added a vertical mill to this lathe also using materials from the local industrial scrapyard we'll first remove the tail stock and the tool holder the middle frame is made from 80 millimeter aluminium profiles with two braces for extra rigidity a back plate is added which can be fixed with four screws the back plate has 4 rollers that fit in the profiles the back plate can be moved left and right via a lead screw the milk uses a morris chuck which i got from ebay it can hold up to 16 millimeter bits the mill spindle is held in taper roller bearings that sit in a housing and can be pre-loaded via a nut the spindle is directly driven by a 50 volt 500 watt brushed dc servo motor via a flexible coupling two 15 millimeter linear guides are mounted on the back plate and the complete motor assembly rides on these guide rails the bottom spindle mounting plate can be fine adjusted via four long bolts the motor assembly can be moved up and down via a lead screw with a warm gear drive coupling that gives around one millimeter vertical movement for one rotation of the handle via a stop the motor assembly can be set at fixed vertical position the vertical readout is done via a digital caliper the motor speed is controlled by a home build speed controller with tahoe feedback the unit is powered by a 50 volt 800 watt power supply the lathe carriage and cross light now serve as the mil xy table the cross slide caliper is moved to the left side and a 20 millimeter thick metal plate is bolted onto the gross slide as mill vice i used separate metal blocks that can be bolted at different positions onto the table the moving jaw can be moved by a 20 millimeter bolt the movement is slightly more than the distance of the holes in the plate so any size object can be clamped down the mil chuck center line matches with the lathe chuck center line which is handy for drilling holes and milling slots in part that are clamped in the lathe chuck for this purpose i mounted a divider disc with 48 holes onto the lathe spindle the back plate assembly can move 25 centimeter horizontally and the motor assembly can move 35 centimeter vertically the xy table can move 25 centimeter in x direction and 20 centimeters in y direction which is quite okay for such a small unit the total weight is now around 100 kilograms i can still slide it to the side of my workbench when not in use the aluminium profiles were cut to size and fixed with bolts to the lathe motor housing and rear plate the 90 degree brackets and t-nuts make it easy to slide and adjust the horizontal beams the braces were made from eight millimeter aluminium and fit nicely into the profile slots they were tapped and bolted to the profiles at the top and bolted to the rear plate and motor housing at the bottom the construction is now sturdy and stiff here you see the assembly of the chuck spindle taper roller bearings and bearing housing which came from an old pick and place machine the motor housing was made from 12 millimeter and eight millimeter aluminium i used my router to mill the sides of the plates here i'm cutting the hole for the bearing assembly i'm using the holes of the bearing housing as a guide to drill the holes in the plate the motor housing is almost finished we can now mount a spindle add the spacer and tighten the nuts for setting the bearing preload the flexible coupling can be fixed as well the guide rails are slid into the blocks here you can see the vertical stop with the t-nut that will grip the back plate the back plate is also made from eight millimeter aluminium it can be fixed to the profiles with bolts and t-nuts here i'm drilling and tapping the holes for the guide rails i used my router and the guide rails to mill a slot in the back plate for the vertical stop the back plate and the guide rails need to be perfectly square to the lathe bed here i'm turning the aluminium rollers for the back plate i'm turning all four together making good use of my home build lathe the end result looks quite nice the bearings fit well in the rollers which are then bolted to the rear plate the roller height can be adjusted to fit the profile slot now the motor assembly can be bolted down and the stop can be mounted the lead screw assembly that moves the motor assembly also came from the scrap yard the bronze nut is bolted to the side of the motor housing and the lead screw drive box and top end bearing are fixed to the rear plate the lead screw that moves the back plate is made from m12 threaded rod i had to turn down one end to fit the bearings and tap an m8 thread at the rod end here is the end result now i'm turning the bearing housing and drilling the holes for the bearing housing mounting i made this jig for drilling straight holes in the profiles which works quite well after mounting one side of the bearing housing i assembled the lead screw assembly to have all components in line then i add some ciana glue to the bearing housing and the profiles now i can drill the holes and tap the thread and assemble everything again then we can place back the back plate assembly onto the aluminium frame a square nut can be positioned and the holes can be drilled the nut is then bolted to the rear plate and the assembly can be moved via the lead screw the power supplies i used also came from the scrapyard i think they came from old telecom equipment they have a 12 volt and an isolated 48 volt 7.8 amp output i placed two units in parallel to get around 800 watts of power these supplies are designed for forced cooling so i added two fans the holes in the housing use some mesh cloth to keep debris out the end result is a nice compact housing that fits at the top of the mill here you can see the speed controller circuit which you can also download from our website the two power supplies are parallel via balancing resistors the power stage is similar to my lathe speed control with tahoe feedback and an oled display i also added motor current sense which is then shown as torque on the display i used isolation routing method for making the pcb draw the component location and copper traces by hand on 0.1 inch grid paper then punch the holes for the leaded components and drill the holes then i covered the top side with marker pen ink as a background for the carbon paper that i used to transfer the top side copper layout to the pcb then i use an engraver tool with a fine dental milling bit to cut away the copper to form the copper islands this process is then repeated for the bottom side finally we need to make sure there are no shorts some top layer holes need to be isolated from top layer copper in this design the two power components are mounted on the housing bottom plate for cooling now we can solder the smd components on the top side and the bottom side then come deleted components finally the power components are soldered in place after some programming we got a working speed controller before final assembly everything has to be aligned well here i'm making sure that the aluminium frame is parallel to the lathe bed after placing the back plate assembly i'm adjusting the rollers to make sure that the motor mount rails are square to the lathe bed as well then the roller bolts can be tightened and checking everything is square again if all is well the mill chuck and the lathe trap center lines are perfectly aligned now the power supply can be mounted and the speed controller can be mounted all the wires need to be connected including the tahoe feedback cable and the speed control front panel when all is wired we can switch on the main switch dial in the required milling speed and flip the switch let's test the torque reading i set a lower rpm and try to slow down the chuck with my hand you can see that the speed stays constant but the torque reading increases due to the higher motor current for the mill vertical movement indication i'm using another digital caliper which is mounted to an aluminium block with a slot in it a bracket is mounted to the side of the motor housing and the caliper block is slid over the bracket the other side is fixed to the motor housing the vertical movement can now be accurately checked and zeroed at any position now it's time to mount the mill table first nine holes are drilled in the cross slide plate the readings from the calipers make it possible to drill the holes very accurately then drill the mill table center hole then i use the cross slide plate holes as a guide to drill the mill table holes which will get well aligned holes now we can start milling the sides of the mill table this is the first use of the mill and seems to work well with light cuts for facing the mill table surface i build a kind of fly cutter first i fix my lathe spindle with the dividing disc now i can mill a slot in the metal round stock that will hold an scmt carbide insert the slot milling looks good now we can turn the shaft on the fly cutter here is the final result i decided to mount two inserts for balancing the tool first i did a trial on a piece of scrap to see how the fly cutter works the surface finish looks nice but there are clear steps in the two adjacent passes this is caused by the milling head not being fully square to the lathe bed surface i check this with a dial indicator on a glass plate the milling head plate can be fine adjusted with the four long bolts it took some effort to get the mill head well adjusted but now the indicator shows it's perfectly square in all directions the mill head bolts can now be tightened let's try a few service passes again there are no more steps between the passes so now we can mill the surface of the milling table the end result is a perfectly flat table service i originally planned to mill t-slots in the table but a few trials showed that it takes a lot of time this 15 millimeter t-slot milling took around one hour therefore i decided to drill holes each 14 millimeter and the rows of holes 60 millimeter apart the hose method will also keep the table more rigid compared to a table with t-slots the x-y table makes drilling holes very accurate and the mil motor torque is sufficient to drill aggressively the vertical caliper ensures each hole is 13 millimeter deep now we can tap the m8 thread in each hole first using the mill chuck to start the thread straight then finishing the tab by hand for the middle vise i found a bar of tool steel on the scrap yard that was nice and square at all sides i cut it with an abrasive disc before i could mill this i needed something to clamp it to the mill table so i made these simple low profile clamps from scrap metal first cutting the slots with an eight millimeter mill the result is not too bad milling the front surface now the stress relief holes need to be drilled then the sides can be cut off and the vertical slots can be cut some top milling is needed which gives me some more practice then the holes for the clamping adjustment bolts can be drilled and tapped here you see the final parts first we mount the low profile fixed jaw to the table and make sure it is parallel with an indicator now the part can be clamped to the table using the other movable jaw after tightening the bolts the part is well clamped now we can start milling the roughly cut surface of the vise fixed jaw and after drilling the holes the recessed slot for the bolt heads can be milled with a 30 millimeter mill now the final vise jaw can be bolted to the table and adjust it to make it parallel and we can finish the otherwise pieces here i'm drilling the holes for the rods which need to be very accurate through all pieces i finally use a 12 millimeter reamer through all parts then some more slot milling and tapping the m12 thread now the parts can be assembled as you can see the rods fit well and the assembly slides perfectly straight and flat on the mill table it would have been very difficult to make this with my simple drill press let's use the vise to clamp a 60 millimeter aluminium block after positioning and bolting down the movable jaw assembly the movable jaw can be pressed against the block with the m12 bolt the block is securely clamped now let's clamp the block using high parallels after tightening the vise jaw one of the parallels comes loose this is because the movable jaw tends to lift when the block is clamped at the top of the jaw to overcome this i can use the two bolts to clamp the movable jaw to the table surface now the block sits well on the parallels again let's make a 28 millimeter cube from this 30 millimeter square aluminium bar first i cut 30 millimeter length with my circle saw i'm using a milling method that i learned from joe posinski's youtube channel first we need to make the block square the mill depth is around 0.7 millimeters this milling direction and sequence gives almost no birth now we can make a light pass around all the edges then the other side of the block can be milled using the same milling direction and sequence as the top and bottom surfaces are now parallel we can clamp them directly in the vise one of the milled sides sits on a single low parallel we can now mill the four sides using the same sequence after all four sides have been done the block is now square we still need to mill down to final size we can now use two parallels to hold it i need to take around 0.61 millimeter off one side so i set the mill on the surface zero the caliper and then set the milling depth to 0.55 millimeter to make sure i won't overshoot the 28 millimeter final size after milling this surface let's check the dimension again almost there i increase the milling depth another three hundredth of a millimeter and do another pass we should now be to final size so i can mill the other surfaces as well with the same milling depth the final dimension is pretty close to target not too bad for a first trial one of the things i learned from this build is that rigidity for a mill is even more important than it is for a lathe this lightweight construction is of course nowhere near as rigid as these heavy cast iron machines but for soft materials and light cuts this mill seems to do quite okay it takes about five minutes to convert it from mill back to the lathe so that's quite convenient i spend about 350 euros on this build which is not too bad i put some of the design files of this build on my website please see the description below for more information i hope you liked this video thanks for watching

Channel: Rolandvanroy

Views: 280,821

Rating: 4.9541235 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: rHEE_eNhZJ4

Length: 25min 38sec (1538 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 28 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/dostoy320]

Impressive stuff, but the way he uses his table saw scares the crap out of me. I've never seen somebody set a saw on the floor and hunch over it like that. I just imagine something going wrong, then instinctively putting your hand down to stop from falling forward..... ugh.

[u/Fortymorekeks]

This man goddam drew out a speed control circuit board, traced it onto copper, hand etched it, soldered all the components and then wired it up. How much more OG does it get then that my lord if that isn't the definition of artisan or at least paragon of your craft then I don't know what is.

[u/nazgul_angmar]

This is a follow-up on a video which I too was privileged to encounter due to a post here on this sub a year ago. Building a lathe from industrial scrap

I had subscribed to that channel instantly after watching that video. The channel went quiet, but a few days ago this new video popped up and I know this sub will love this.

Again just an FYI: I am not the video creator. I am just sharing it here.

[u/_theirritant]

I make things out of metal, by hand (and tool), for a living.

I have done fine for myself.

I watched the video.

I am a useless slug.

[u/JWGhetto]

To make a clamp, first you have to make a clamp.

This guy

[u/SkaBonez]

Super awesome idea and great execution. I hope he eventually upgrades it to a collet system though. Jacobs chucks are not meant for milling, only drilling. They don't take lateral loads well.

[u/TrickyTrichomes]

Dude’s gonna build a spaceship from trash! 🤩

[u/SCUMDOG_MILLIONAIRE]

This is so impressive. The design and structure fabrication was cool enough - he has some clever elements in the design and I like how he casually made a couple jogs along the way. But then I was blown away by the hand built circuitry and programming. That combination of knowledge and skills is just impressive

[u/mud_tug]

Amazing build.

Of course the rigidity can be improved but the general arrangement is very good.