Milling Machine Advice

[njhussey]

After using the mill (and lathe) to make a one off spacer and a couple of other bits I now wish I'd got a mill with a dovetail Z axis and not the round column!! We've got a BILZ tapping head that requires the headstock to be moved up to use and as soon as you move it you lose position so you have to go back to finding your centres again which is a right royal PITA. I'm going to get a cheap laser pointer and mill a 1mm notch in some white plastic and attach the laser pointer to the mill head pointing back at the wall at the plastic. Hopefully (if the plastic is truely vertical) then I can keep the head square. I've discovered that the rack for the head is only wedged top and bottom on the column and not secured in any way so it can flex as much as it likes.....crap design but I guess you get what you pay for. I can see the machine coming apart and the rack being drilled and tapped so it is fixed to the column to stop some of this flexing. Trouble is we seem to have sold a few "one offs" recently so can't do anything to it yet...

Pics of the spacer, the DRO is brilliant for doing PCD's...makes it easy to drill bolt holes.