Lifting Mildred's Spirits

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Poor Mildred has such a hard time keeping her spirits up in the face of the snide remarks she hears from the knee mill professionals about mill/drills, "really just a drill press" or "you'll soon hate that round column".

Hell, I really can't blame her. I dislike hauling on that crank myself, so much so that I often fudge on doing it & make her stick her neck out 3 or 4 inches instead of lowering her head when I ought to drop it down. But I dislike raising it much more than lowering it when I need to switch to a chuck from a collet.
And I know she picks up on my attitude even when I don't say anything out loud.

Well, I've thought about it for a long time - long enough to either do something about or just admit to Mildred that I don't really care as much as I say I do.

I saw one picture over on that project aggregator site where the guy mounted a 120v gearmotor on top of his mill and that cemented my notion that I really didn't want to do that. I'm not sure just how he mounted it but he had to remove the shroud & it surely didn't improve the appearance.
So I didn't want to do that to my old girl. She has had a hard life as it is; I can't afford to make her feel uglier than she already does.

Besides, I have a nicer motor in store for this.

1. Not all journeys begin with a single step. This one began with a 1 inch hex.
Cut to length, faced on both ends.

2 & 3. Drilled through, 5/16ths, if I remember correctly.
That's because I happen to have a long enough drill in that size.

4. Next, Mildred went to work on it, drilled out to 5/8ths.
Then I broke out the Christmas-past boring head (thanks, Mark & Stacey).
I'm still always surprised when it works so nicely.

5. So we hollowed it out to fit nicely on that bolt. Something around .675".
I figured I'd need a little slop to make this work so later we took it out to .70 even.

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1. Fact is, we made a pair of the little hex things.
See that nice, shiny mill vise? Oh, I guess it's a mill/drill vise.
Thanks, Wilton.

2. Then after a whole lot of figgerin' & fittin', I cut a piece of 1/2 x 2 inch flat bar & prepped it for surgery, facing the ends for square & to length.
See that nice F clamp? Thanks, Wilton.

3. Tacked that together & tried the new thing inside the back of Mildred's head where it will be mostly concealed by her motor mount.
It seemed to be up to the mission.

4. Then just welded the crap out of it.

5. I tell you one thing: it's a trick to keep sliding these two bolts in & out of there with the motor mount swung as far back as it will go and I had to have as much space as possible for my left hand to jiggle the new Thing around while I manipulated the bolts with my right.
The bolt heads have to be turned one way to clear the motor mount (bottom bolt), then there is barely room to rotate the bolt 90° before it can seat in the cavity (top bolt).

I had to do this often enough to get good at it, if there was any good to be gettin' but I never did improve very much.

So that takes care of the first step and by this point Mildred knew I was actually committed to this relationship.

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So, on to the marvelous motor to be used in this endeavor.
It is a 90volt dc Bison motor I bought off ebay well over 10 years ago, maybe closer to 15 years, for another project involving a little Belsaw planer, which I later decided to skip.

1. Data plate
As you can see, the motor itself is rated at 1/5 hp, 2000 rpm and of course, it is by nature, variable speed and reversible.
Then it is geared down to 139 rpm max at 90v dc and rated to 106 inch pounds.
Not counted the shafts (both ends) the case is about 12 inches long & she weighs in at about 16 pounds.
I thought it might do the job. Mildred said it was worth a shot.

2. There were some problems to be over come at every step along the way.
In the first place. there was an odd round collar on the output shaft that would not pull off. I finally had to dremel it into 2 halves to dispose of it because the end of the shaft had a bad mushroom on it.
That took some filing and emery cloth to get it back in useful condition.

3. The back end of the little guy was not so much of a problem. It has 4 evenly spaced screws that used to hold an electronic brake and the hex on the shaft was also part of that.

4. The motor face plate was more interesting.
You can see that there are 4 bolt holes where you would hope they would be, in the corners. But then there are 3 more which extend almost 1/4" from the end plate surface.
And there are a pair of other raised surface to contend with as well as the bearing housing for the output shaft.

5. Thus there were all of these lumpy things to deal with in making a motor mount because I wanted to use the 4 corner bolt holes.

[Shade Tree Welder]

I think Mildred will be very happy with
the attention you are showing her.

[digr]

This looks very interesting !!

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Well after all Ted, Mildred is the Most Interesting Mill in the World.

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About that face plate on this little motor, it did take some finagling to get a piece of 1/4 inch steel to fit.

1 & 2. back to the drill press for the first set of holes.
By the way, that Wilton 6" drill press vise really is a fine thing to have for projects like this. I bitched about the factory gibs in the beginning but it really does save a lot of re-positioning and it does grip the workpiece.

3 & 4. I had hoped that a 1 1/2" holesaw would wobble out just enough to clear the bearing pocket, but it didn't quite over-cut it's size.

5. So back to Mildred and my other little Mark & Stacey Christmas gift from a couple of years back.

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1. Once again, I'm always surprised at how well this works.

2. Got a nice fit so far

3. These 2 humps were still in the way

4. I really did mangle this part but it won't show once the thing is done & I won't tell Mildred if you won't.

5. Oh yeah, along the way Charlie made us 4 little spacers to fit over the 4 corner bolts. They wound up being pretty important.

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1. So finally, we got the face plate to fit

2, 3 & 4. And stuck to a base plate, also 1/4 inch.

5. Wilson does not particularly like to hang out in the shop with me except on two occasions:

a. If I have company, as JimTx and dubby and several other people can bear witness

b. or when I turn the welder on. He is fascinated by the wire moving through the cable & the way the cable jumps when I pull the trigger.
No matter where he is or what he's doing, he hears the welder come on when I flip the power switch & here he comes.
I guess he thinks it's the Most Interesting Welder in the World.

[platypus20]

What the hell kind of build is this??, so far not one single glimpse of a hand gun in the background..............................




As for the work, so far its very interesting. How does Mildred like the boring adapter??