MadModder

Hi everyone. I recently sold my Alpine minor mill ( clone of RF25 etc) which I had owned for 25 years & bought a Chester 626 mill. I had retained an Align power feed which was bought from Axminster tools as it was nearly new & 240 volt. This clamps horizontally on the left hand side of the table unlike the 626 which hangs vertically on the right hand side. I saw no reason in principle why my unit couldn’t go on the left hand side horizontally, saving me several hundred pounds. The only problems were that the original clamping bolts were too far apart for the 626 table, necessitating an adaptor plate made out of 10mm alloy, countersunk for longer hex bolts & tapped 8mm for bolting to the power unit. A second problem was the differing diameters of the leadscrews, 17mm for the old mill & .625” on the 626. This was simply solved by making a bush & pressing into the gear. I could have bored out the gear & turned a larger bush, but I wanted to keep it standard. The grub screw already in the gear fitted into the keyway providing a weak point in case of any table jams.
The power feed now works perfectly, & apart from increasing the length of the table, appears to be just as good as the vertical unit.
I see that there are other units for sale on eBay cheaper than the Align units, but they are still 110v requiring a transformer.

Andrew,

I've just been catching up on this thread, reading back to page 2 where you write about battery leaks.  I have some battery holders for ½ AA size lithium batteries (as used on old Mac computers).  I also have a few of the batteries as well (unused but they've been on the shelf for a few years).  If they'd be any help to you I happily put some in the Post.

All went pretty ok, but:

1: I don't use gelcoat to keep the whole thing translucent, therefore back of blade side corner was not crisp. probably have to laminate veil and think of using a perforated separation film and pressurepad or slight pressure or vacuum on it.

2: Turns out that two layers of 160 g/m2 twill is thinner than I anticipated. Anyway, glued them together on the mould to see if can be done and keeps straight.

The release wax and PVA works, it even gives an early release....now went to other end of the extreme...look and learn I guess. Maybe just a dab of film on the nearly vertical feature of the mould (back of the blade).

Think that I'm going to put just a little mictoballoon or silica thickened resin at the very back of the blade section before veil, to keep it in shape, also very tempted to add some of that micture at the very blade edge to give more surface for gluing it. Might even need to make it two steps.

I got pictures, but they are boring and they donät actually show much....paper thin one meter katana type blade at this point.

Pekka

Pekka,

There is a  pair of external terminals on the PSU labelled "Power Supply OK" - they are not connected, but of course may also be routed internally to the backboard of the logic crate. They seem to be a N/O relay contact that closes a second or two after the PSU is powered up. Certainly they change state when the 'Reset' button on the PSU is pressed then revert to the closed state after a second.

Of course I have no idea whether relay open or closed is the good state, but as with no mains they are 'open', the likelihood is that 'closed' is 'OK'

And here's he finished bore gauge. The slot allows me to drop it down over the boring arbor and test the bore without taking apart my setup. I was a little apprehensive putting a slot in the gauge, in case there were internal tensions that would change the OD's, but measuring after slotting (and letting the gauge cool) showed the diameters were still spot on.

So I stamped both sides of the gauge with their dimensions, and we're ready to continue boring the journals.