Thread: Guides for installing and setting up a mill?

An interstate friend of mine has just bought a cheap mill from an online seller, and has had it delivered. But he hasn't setup a mill before, and so is constantly asking me questions about how he should go about it. To make it worse last time i was around up there his lathe was basically eating itself to death on casting sand as it hadnt been cleaned before use. Plus he is on Coronavirus shutdown and has plenty of time on his hands at home.

Does anyone know of a good online guide/resource for machinery installation? Covering things like cleaning off shipping grease, the tramming up the ways, shimming the base square etc.

Basically something I can send him to follow so I don't get constantly interrupted with more questions.

BlondiHacks on YouTube has a series, and so does MrPete222, from memory. I think the Blondihacks ones are good for a complete beginner. Probably plenty of others, too.

Where is he located? Joining a model engineering society might be helpful depending on what he's planning to do, though not much help to him right now.

Phil

I found this one and sent it to him for now: https://knowledge.axminster.co.uk/se...lling-machine/

Will have to look at Blondihacks and see if he can do that.

He lives in rural NSW.

Originally Posted by takai

An interstate friend of mine has just bought a cheap mill from an online seller, and has had it delivered. But he hasn't setup a mill before, and so is constantly asking me questions about how he should go about it. To make it worse last time i was around up there his lathe was basically eating itself to death on casting sand as it hadnt been cleaned before use. Plus he is on Coronavirus shutdown and has plenty of time on his hands at home.

Does anyone know of a good online guide/resource for machinery installation? Covering things like cleaning off shipping grease, the tramming up the ways, shimming the base square etc.

Basically something I can send him to follow so I don't get constantly interrupted with more questions.

Easy Peasy!
Get him to join up with us.
We will take everyone except spammers.
As well as Blondilocks, he can enjoy our excellent company, fellowship and advice, especially as its local.

There are lots of advantages normally. If you put a general location in your info,a lot of times there is someone pretty local who is happy to visit and give on the spot help. As well our blokes and blokettes often know where the goodies are ,where the bargains are,
where is the place to get certain materials and who are the ripoff merchants. Ok we can't do the visiting just now but its possible when the craziness goes away.

Granted some of us are not as kind on the eye as blondilocks may be , but collectively we are a pretty potent info source.

If it was me,I would be sorting out the lathe properly ,before starting on the mill. He might need to make something and its better to have the lathe ready to go than not. Again he can get good support here and people will answer his questions to the best of their ability and their ability in many cases is considerable. A few of us, including myself, had free casting sand with our lathes in the early days and overcame it with help from the talented folk, here.

If he does join please advise him to do 2 things. Location.location ,location.Example something as close as South Brisbane ,say if he lived in Brisbane. The other thing is to introduce himself into the Welcome Wagon. Far too many join up and just start posting and I don't get to make them aware of the extent and navigation for the Forum until I see a new name.

If he signs up, please ask him to make the Welcome Wagon his first post.
Cut and paste the following to him if he wants to join. If he joins he can go straight to the Welcome wagon.

Go to FORUM box in the top left hand Corner of the page. Click on the white down arrow. That will cause a dropdown menu to appear where the top line Forum Home is selected.From there all he has to do is scroll down the page about half a dozen titles down until he sees Welcome Wagon and click on it .He can make his intro post from there and we can welcome him.

We are already looking forward to welcome him.

Grahame