[Wallerawang]

Hello Everyone
My name is Steve, and I have been floating around here a few years and I thought I might put a little back into the forum after taking a fair bit from it. This will be my third build having converted a RF31 round column mill and a 12" x 36" lathe, both have been very successful. As I said I am very happy with both my other projects but had thought that a larger mill might be nice and have looked drooling at the Industrial Hobbies Mill as it has double the Y travel and an extra 200mm on the X compared to the RF31. Not to mention having all that Z travel - you can't imagine how much planing goes into setting up jobs on a round column mill with regard to thinking about the tools you need to use and the start point for your z set up so you don't run out of travel when swapping your cutters over.
I had many thoughts about this including importing one from the USA - all too costly until I found that Titan Machine Tools at Wyong on the New South Wales Central Coast imports a clone of the IH Mill. So that was the start - a 3 hour drive there and another one back - I had the mill of my dreams.
I am a Machinist by trade and I started about 30 years ago - I have been out my trade for about 20 years and now run a clothing factory. I have kept my trade as a hobby and build Live Steam Locomotives (a photo of one of mine is below).
This build will suit the type off work I do - Steel and Cast Iron Machining so I won't be doing the belt drive conversion as I don't need the high speeds this provides and I won't be able to use the Tormach Tooling System - (not recommended for tools over 1/2" dia. or heavy cuts(from the Tormach blurb on their system)) so I won't be needing an Air Powered Draw Bar or an Auto Tool Changer. I will put my money into good ball screws and servo's. Lets call it a light industrial build.
I would like to acknowledge some inspiration from G.D. Marsh and Pete from Texas and a few others on this site - yes I have borrowed more then a few of their ideas for this build.
The Fun Begins.
Steve

[hoss2006]

Wow that train must have taken a long time to build, beautiful job!
I was once into the train hobby but on a much smaller scale, HO.
Lets see more train pics please.
Hoss

[spv123]

Nice machine Steve. I wonder what is done to get the increased travel of 290 on the Y axis? I grabbed a similar machine from Asset Plant (MD45). I guess you would call mine the "middle road" RF45 clone, in that it has a 800 table and 230 Y travel.

I do see that the Titan machine was about 1k more expensive than my MD45. Is there some trick to the Y travel or is it merely cast different?

[gd.marsh]

Welcome to the Zone Steve,

Beautiful locomotive man, what a project that would be to undertake .. And congratulations on your new 45 class mill, they are great machines for conversion to CNC. I'm flattered that you find inspiration in some of what I've done with mine. It's been a long project for me because of so many other commitments, but I've really enjoyed the journey. Judging by the locomotive .. I'm going to guess your machine will turn out to be a very nice piece of work.

Gary

[Wallerawang]

Hi Hoss, A few more Loco photos, This one took me about 1200 hours over a few years to build - Thanks for the compliments.

Hi SPV123 - The IH clone mills have different castings - the same gearbox/motor/spindle arrangement and your right about them being more expensive - they are very basic - for the same money you could get a RF45 or 46 with power feed and DRO's but it was the base machine I needed for this conversion.

Hi Gary - Thanks - I have read your thread front to back about ten times - you will see a few of your ideas in my machine - I hope it turns out as good as yours did.

Steve

[Wallerawang]

Hi Guys
This is the machine I got for this project. In the last photo you can see it had a baby. The PDF attached has all the specs. My initial impressions - It looks like the pictures, it's a bit rough in places, but where it counts - the big heavy castings - it's great.
Steve

[aarggh]

That train is nothing short of spectaular Steve! I can only imagine what you'll be producing with a larger mill.

cheers,
Ian

[RomanLini]

Nice machine Steve! May I ask the price? (I'm an Aussie too, in QLD)

[Wallerawang]

Hi RomanLini
It was $2995.00 loaded into my ute.

Ian - Thanks

Steve

[arizonavideo]

I see you don't want to do the belt drive as you don't need RPM but you may still want to look at a 3 phase motor and a VFD.

The gear box makes a ton of noise and if you run a VFD you can slow the motor down a bit and all of a sudden the machine quiets down a bunch. Some boxes are quiet but most are not.


A VFD also lets you run second high more of the time which runs much quieter that high gear does.

Fantastic train BTW. I just set it as my desktop for a bit. We have a few narrow track train places in AZ we have gone to.

Good fun and good people.

[D.L]

Nice work steve.

[RomanLini]

Hi RomanLini
It was $2995.00 loaded into my ute.
...

Thanks for the info.
I love the size but it's getting a bit pricy for me, especially with shipping of 700 miles or so.

It will be great to see your build, it might be enough to tempt me into doing the same! My little X2 mill is not up to the larger tasks and i was considering goign X3 or SX3.

[Wallerawang]

Hi Arizonavideo;
With regard to your suggestion on the 3 phase motor and VFD - Yes I completely agree, this was my plan all along and talking of the noisy gearboxes I might be able to give a bit of a hint as to why they are noisy.
The original Industrial Hobbies Mill's website state they have hardened gears in the gearbox and only having a clone I thought I would check my gears out and see if they are hard as well - I had planed to do the same with my mill drive as they have with a 3 phase motor and a variable frequency drive and aim for a top speed in the high 3000's maybe even 4000 rpm.
Well I took the motor off and then the top of the gearbox and was then started thinking that seeing that this mill has not ever been started how second hand the oil looked. So I drained the oil and guess what - it was about 10% foundry sand. The factory did a very poor job of cleaning the castings before machining them and painting them. I was then very glad I had not plugged it in and gave it a run - it would have ruined the gears and bearings. By the way my gears are hardened.
So I guess this means a complete strip down of the gear box and a fair bit of cleaning. So out with the pressure washer and a good scrub - this got a fair bit of the sand out but there was still a mile of it left - I had to get an old scriber into the nooks and crannies and a wire brush onto the more open areas. In the end a coat of paint stripper and another 2 pressure washes got 99.9% of the sand out of the gear box. 2 coats of epoxy paint I hope will trap any remaining sand stuck on the casting. The third picture shows the cleaned and painted interior of my gearbox.
You know how I was worried about ruining the bearings - too late - I think they were rubbish before they put them in. So a complete new set of bearings and seals we purchased. Another afternoon of scrubbing the gears and shafts have got them clean and the new bearings installed made everything smooth as silk. I hope this eases the noise that these gearboxes are famous for - I think it will help a lot. Picture 2 shows my nice clean gears and shafts all with new bearings.
So onto my motor selection - I picked a 3h.p.(2.2 kW) Teco Monarch Alloy 3 phase motor 2 pole - at 50Hz the motor will spin at 2850 rpm - this gives a spindle speed of about 3200rpm. (50 Hz is the Australian Standard) - this should give me a good range of speed and still some good torque at the lower hertz - I know the VFD has a lot to do with the torque produced at lower Hz and I think I have found a suitable one - more later on that. Photo 4 is my motor.
One issue with this motor is the size of its shaft - 24mm OD compared with the standard motor's 19mm - this was not too hard to sort out - I decided to machine out the input shaft of the gearbox and cut a new keyway to suit the motor - still heaps of meat left there and it's supported by a bearing as well. If the motor ever needs changing in the future this will make it a couple of minutes job. The other way to go would have been to machine down the motor shaft like the standard motor has been but that's a lot more work. Photo 1 shows me cutting the keyway.
More to come!
Steve

[phomann]

Thanks for the info.
I love the size but it's getting a bit pricy for me, especially with shipping of 700 miles or so.

It will be great to see your build, it might be enough to tempt me into doing the same! My little X2 mill is not up to the larger tasks and i was considering goign X3 or SX3.

I've tecently purchased the TM20VL. It is about the size of the X3 but is a bit more robust and has a 700mm table. I'm doing my conversion here.
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/bencht...f20_g0704.html

The stand that came with it will need to be bolted down as the whole thing will tip over if the table is wound fully to one side.

I bought a rolling base for it so I could move it around. It's good while I do the conversion, but everything is too unstable.

Cheers,

Peter.

[arizonavideo]

Well Steve it looks like you have the motor handled.

Before I went to the 3HP internal belt drive,

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dmfP5i2syQ]Single speed internal belt driive RF-45 LM-45 .MP4 - YouTube[/ame]

I dropped on a cheep 4HP 3600 motor and the shaft was way to large, I found it easy just to pull the rotor and turn it to 19mm and cut a key. The $90.00 China motor only lasted a year or so but worked and I had a better high speed for doing Aluminum which is mostly what I work with.

Some people say their gear boxes are not so loud and some say after changing bearing they were much quieter but high on mine was horrid and the splined shaft rattled a bunch, rather than mess with it all I made the internal single speed unit which works well for most things. I was tapping tonight with a M8 and it was fine.

On the train, do you make casting for things like the wheels or do you buy them ruff or finished?

[Wallerawang]

Hi Peter
Thanks for your interest, I have got a few bits and pieces from you for my other two projects, I'm working on a list for this one. You need to plan your stand carefully - I'm going to document mine over the week end - see what you think of it.
Steve

[Wallerawang]

Hi Arizonavideo
I watched your video a few times when I was planing what to do with my spindle - you have a very neat solution there.
The toughest job I had to do on my RF31 was bore a 8" hole though cast iron and the slowest I could run the RF31 was 120rpm - hard going and I'm glad don't have to do that often. So with my set up I was trying to get down to about 40 or 50 rpm for those jobs. So at 10Hz in low-low gear I get a theoretical speed of 36rpm - I'm just not so sure of the torque I will get at that speed - The VFD promises it, but a test drive will prove it. At what Hz does your torque seem to drop off?
Thanks
Steve

[RomanLini]

I've tecently purchased the TM20VL. It is about the size of the X3 but is a bit more robust and has a 700mm table. I'm doing my conversion here.
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/bencht...f20_g0704.html
...

Thank you very much for the info, it looks like a nice machine indeed for their listed price of $1795! Does it really have a 550mm X travel from a 700mm table? That just sounded a bit optimistic to me.

Also apologies to Wallerawang for the offtopic discussion in your thread.

[arizonavideo]

I have a cheep China VFD but it has a lot of settings.

Torque is a function of current so I could drive the motor at 7A at 5 Hz and it makes lots of torque but the motor's cooling fan moves no air at 10Hz so it will over heat in 1 minuet or so. I run around 2A (On my drive you set the starting ramp voltage.) at 5Hz for low with no extra cooling. I have a few large cooling fans I could add but I just don't see the need for what I do. I rarely use the boring head in steel. At 2A I can stop the motor fairly easy with a 3/4" drill in aluminum.

For really slow speeds its hard to beat the gears. You get the widest ratio and no slippage even with high loads. If you add the VFD and motor you will be able to run at 20Hz or so with almost full power and a have a really nice slow cutting speed, it will be much quieter too. You'll like it a lot, say good by to belt changes.

The stock motors are basically crap and shake a lot and make a bunch of noise.(The new RF-45 motor is not as good as the old Rf-31 you have.) I started one on a steel table and it was clamped but still shook the whole thing. The 3hp Larson just sat their and ran smooth.

The belts are really for people doing mostly aluminum. I run around 4,000 RPM most of the time and I may mount up a two speed drive so I can try out some of the 3/8" carbide three flutes at 6 or 7K. I'm starting to like the smaller bits as they don't shake the machine at all but you need to spin them fast to get the chips out.

I had a RF-31 for a few years and it was fine but you will really like the 45 better after you get it dialed in some. Look for poor fitting gibs and the Z slide wanting to tilt.

The stock spindle bearings are fine for lower speeds and some have run them up to 5K for long duration so after the break in add some good grease and they will last for years. The TRB are really strong and offer long life. The lower bearing cover has no seal so any dust or metal you blow off the work may find its way into the bearing. I made a close fitting rubber seal to fit the inside of the dust cover and it keeps out all the grunge. If it rubs it will make a lot of heat so it must fit just so.

Go ahead and whip out the jig saw and cut 1.25" or about from the front of the base to allow for more Y travel. It cut outs really fast and you will need the extra Y travel sooner than you think. Drill two small holes for the corners.

Do you have any current projects?

[pippin88]

Thank you very much for the info, it looks like a nice machine indeed for their listed price of $1795! Does it really have a 550mm X travel from a 700mm table? That just sounded a bit optimistic to me.

Also apologies to Wallerawang for the offtopic discussion in your thread.

If my memory serves I get ~490mm travel from the TM20LV.