It's Not Mine, But......

[rake60]

I took a job as a Maintenance Technician at a local window manufacturing factory.
The machine tools in the maintenance room are limited. They have an old but solid
South Bend lathe and a Grizzly G0520 Drill Press w/ Cross Sliding Table & Power Feed.

I don't know why Grizzly calls it a drill press. It is a very capable, mid-sized milling machine.

Last week one of the maintenance projects involved repairing a big roof fan. The fan shaft
was junked due to one of the bearings locking up. It was pretty straight forward, a 1" shaft
with a flat on one end for the fan and a 3" long, 1/4" keyway on the other end for a Browning
taper lock bushing. There is an NC Bridgeport mill on the production line but that seemed a
bit of overkill for the task at hand.

I cut the 1/4" keyway with a 1/4" end mill using the "G0520 Drill Press".
The final result was a finished width of .253", that's tight enough for me!
The flat on the other end was cut using a 3" face mill. The machine didn't
even notice.

It's a little high priced for my hobby budget today, but when conditions
allow, I'll be buying one! It's small enough to do the little stuff AND has the
capability to do the bigger things without the cost of a big mill.

Rick

 

[Tin Falcon]

Isnt it nice to try a machine out before you buy one!!
Tin

 

[Deanofid]

The description says it will do milling work, and I guess it should. It has the same head as
the ones they put on their round column Rong Fu style milling machines. Fairly heavy looking
machine.

Dean

 

[Stan]

Rick: Congratulations on finding some paying employment, even if not very challenging.

 

[rake60]

I wouldn't say the job isn't challenging. The little machining projects are a very small
part of it. This old dog has a lot of new tricks to learn in a very short time.

Rick