Thread: Help, planer or long bed mill owners

If anyone here has a planer or long bed mill I need to put a 6' long keyway in a replacement feed shaft on my DSG. It has too many bends as well as a decent twist in it. Being in or near Melbourne would be a big bonus but I can courier if needed.

Happy to pay, trade work or tooling for it.

Keyway is 1/4" X 50"

Regards

You should be able to do it on your mill. Just cut and move the part, cut again.

I cut a new feedscrew for the 10EE on just a bridgeport clone.

Something that long and a cut on one side, there is the risk of it bowing as stresses are relieved.

You can use my mill if like Ralph, it has about 750 mm travel so you would only have to move it once.
Would use the DH and tailstock to hold it and would probably need a suport betwen them
I think 41 mm dia goes through the DH bore.
What dia is it?

cheers, shed

Originally Posted by .RC.

You should be able to do it on your mill. Just cut and move the part, cut again.

I cut a new feedscrew for the 10EE on just a bridgeport clone.

Something that long and a cut on one side, there is the risk of it bowing as stresses are relieved.

This. It won't matter if it moves a touch as long as the keyed part slides freely on the shaft. Set up a guide fence, raise the cutter a couple of thousandths then slide the shaft to the new starting position. The cutter and fence will keep alignment quite closely.

If you get stuck locally I'll be passing through in a bit over a week and can do it on my planer or mill when I get home. Might just get 50" on the planer.

PDW

I agree with what everyone said and do it in stages, a fence setup is a good idea as PDW stated, it would be hard to get it wrong doing it that way.

Thanjs fellas. Guess I'm just doing this 499mm at a time.

I have a touch more at 600mm, I have always wanted a mill with 1000mm plus X travel, but it's only the occasional job that it would be handy for.

I bid 650mm X travel!

I'd also suggest that if you have a horizontal axis, rather than use an end mill, use a slotting saw type cutter. If you use a T slot as a locator/ support it will also help line things up when you move the work.

Michael

Originally Posted by Michael G

I bid 650mm X travel!

Vicky U2 has 750mm....... if you take the end stops off and *carefully* feed until things don't move any more. Not recommended to use power feed & walk away though. Someone did before I bought this mill and I had to fix the result.....

PDW

Originally Posted by Michael G

I bid 650mm X travel!

I'd also suggest that if you have a horizontal axis, rather than use an end mill, use a slotting saw type cutter. If you use a T slot as a locator/ support it will also help line things up when you move the work.

Michael

Funny post, made me laugh, I could push my vertical/horizontal mill to 700mm, but that would be over traveling the table/saddle. Would still be rigid enough, but not enough travel for this job.

I keep reading that the lathe is the only machine that can duplicate itself. So I suggest you make it on the lathe.