I CAN HAZ MILING MACHIEN?

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mrfoo
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Sat Aug 14, 2021 1:06 am

It's been a while that I've been looking for a smallish milling machine to go with my smallish lathe(s). Yes, I am aware that the chinese make some fairly capable small milling machines. But I simply don't like them. Horrible yucky plastic tat. Id far rather something made of great big chunks of cast iron, something made probably around the time I was born and that will still be a huge chunk of cast iron long after I have gone. And I'm not afraid of repairing / restoring stuff. So I've been scouring the small ads for about 6 months. I've missed a few, and the majority of affordable (read - close to zero budget) machines are 3 tonne hulking monsters that wouldn't go in the house, let alone my workshop.

And then. Wednesday. Mrs Foo went off on a 2 day hiking trip with some of our friends, leaving me to look after the house, go to work, and all that jazz. Bloody marvellous. Bunch of bastards. Wednesday midday, on the local small ads site, "small milling machines". I look. 2 small milling machines, like it says on the label. Grotty photos. Look really scruffy and missing a lot of parts. Phone anyway. "Yes, they are pretty scruffy. Yes, missing parts, but I might be able to source some of the missing bits for you". "What are you wanting to get for them?" "Make me an offer" "Hrm. Twice the scrap rate, absolute maximum" "Fine, I'll deliver on Friday. One, or both?" "Only the one".

And so, yesterday, I became the owner of 2/3 of a Crouzet FC100. A bit rusty, a bit grotty, but the slideways are all complete and have their scraping marks visible under the layer of light corrosion, motor works, mechanical variator appears to work, the horizontal spindle turns freely and without play. Missing in action : vertical head (but the guy might have found one for me, we'll find out on Monday maybe), all handwheels, leadscrews, nuts and accompanying hardware.

Mrs Foo is not impressed, despite the fact that on Thursday I sold an Amiga 1200 I pulled from the tip, for twice what I just paid for scrap iron.

The other machine was a Wirth and Gruffat, a bit smaller, but missing a lot more. Not worth the hassle of parting it out, to be honest.

X travel stock is 220mm, but that can be upped to 300mm by extending the leadscrew or sacrificing the rapids. I don't have rapids, but I do have a plan. Y travel 100mm. Z travel 330mm. Horizontal spindle bore Morse 4 with adaptors for morse 3, morse 2, and W20 (I believe the current one is W20, I hope so as I have a lot of W20 tooling for the lathe). Vertical head if I can find one is W20. Continuously variable speed (missing the rev counter, bah) and a 1.5hp 3 phase motor (220/380).

This is how it should look (mentally delete the horrible jade green Hammerite finish) :
Photo courtesy of https://www.lathes.co.uk, but they seem to block embedding
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This is how it actually looks :

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Yes, I can haz miling machien.
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Anatine Duo
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Sun Aug 15, 2021 7:54 pm

twice scrap rate nice!
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Moonbogg
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Sun Aug 15, 2021 11:27 pm

Very nice! That's a good way to bargain: twice the scrap rate. Looking forward to your progress on getting it up and running. Congrats!
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mrfoo
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Mon Aug 16, 2021 5:45 am

So, spent some time stripping down a bit. Managed to unblock the tooling and the Z axis, (hooray for hand winches), loking at the scraping marks on the slideways and gibs I thought to myself "that's been rescraped", but given the way the gibs fit, I'd be surprised if it's done many hours from new.

Dirty, yes. Missing parts, yes. Surface corrosion, yes. But it's basically BNIB from about 1960. After a bit of cleaning and some oil, all 3 axes run like silk over their entire travel, adjusted with no discernible slop. Get in!

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jackssmirkingrevenge
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Thu Aug 19, 2021 8:58 am

mrfoo wrote:
Sat Aug 14, 2021 1:06 am
Mrs Foo is not impressed, despite the fact that on Thursday I sold an Amiga 1200 I pulled from the tip, for twice what I just paid for scrap iron.
Honestly there's no pleasing them...

Sweet find and it looks like it's in good hands!
hectmarr wrote:You have to make many weapons, because this field is long and short life
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