Todays Project - What did you do today?

[Highpower]

(01-20-2013, 10:41 AM)EdK Wrote: Nice mods Willie. I like the large hand wheel you have for the knee crank. It looks much more user friendly than those other styles with the single arm.

Ed

The hand wheel will be for fine adjustments after raising/lowering the knee with the power feed. I don't think I would want to crank it all the way up with the hand wheel alone.

The mechanical advantage with the long single arm crank makes it easier to raise the knee, but the one that came with the mill was ridiculously long. If the Y-axis crank handle was turned to my left (which is where it always was when I needed to move the knee ), the swing on the Z crank handle overlapped it and they hit each other. Some great 'enginrearing' there, huh?



I though about putting another keyway in the opposite side of the Y crank handle several times to try and reduce the odds.

Between that and having a weak back and bad shoulders, I really wanted a power feed anyway. Spotting, drilling, chamfering, and tapping multiple holes on the mill wears me out with the constant up-down-up-down of moving the knee to keep the work close to the spindle.

The original hand crank (7 lug) wouldn't mate up with the new Bridgeport clutch hub (9 lug) anyway, so I figured I would just go with a handwheel.