Modification to the Round Column Mill 

That saved me from attempting the same type of design without considering what happened in your experience. So, thank you for the thought provoking outcome.

That's a nice endmill in the mailbag..😮

Also I saw that oiler you made for Kurtis; it's a beauty!

Now i know who to call when i need welding done.. nice job!!

When I got my RF30 clone the research began, and the final decision was pinning the rack for me. As it turned out, it is not perfect, but with care I can get within 0.05mm which I can live with. I feel certain that it could have ended up quite a bit better if I had found a way to accurately "dress" one side of the rack prior to pinning it. All that was involved besides pinning the rack is fitting a small unobtrusive clamping mechanism under the head to remove backlash between the rack and the rack slots in the head casting, prior to re-clamping the head. The one thing I will emphasise in case anyone wanted to got down this path is that the end result will be totally dependant upon how accurately parallel the rack is pinned to the column. Your external bracing system is far neater and at least as accurate as any I have seen, and I hope you get it to where you are happy with it. Cheers 🙂

i was thinking of doing this same set up...but having one on each side...great video ...thank you

Thanks for some shaper action. I think you and I will be worn out before the shaper is LOL! Nice gift from Aaron. That clamping kit is super handy.

g"'day matt, that is not a failure, it is a bloke having a good crack at something people like me cannot yet achieve.don''t be so hard on yourself.cheers

Thanks for sharing!! Maybe a base clamp on the extension bush or a wider rod base plate a the head?

You never know till you try. Good job. Great channel, I like that it is real.

Nothing ventured, nothing learned. I think you gave it a darned good crack, Matty. Good to see the shaper - if time is not an issue, they are versatile and much cheaper on tooling than a mill.

I once owned a round column mill, my decision was to get rid of it. But the effort you put in here was very good work.

Thanks Matty woho shaper action. Mill drill manufacturer should have this as a option. Great work. Thank you for sharing this.

Matty, great minds think alike. This is the first I am seeing this video but I arrived at essentially the same arrangement for my round column mill. I believe that this is the cleanest design off all the others I've seen posted out there.

Thank you for sharing

I know you like using the shaper Matty, but strewth, that was a lot of machining! I think I would have attacked it with park 9" grinder to hack the majority off and had a usable lump of steel left over instead of two bin fulls of swarf!

Good job man. Sometimes you win some and sometimes you lose some but at least you learned from this and you have the courage to show that. I have seen many of the round rod mods for this type mill. If I were to do it I would try to use a square way system with a gib. Anyways take care.

Thanks Matty , the destination might not have been everything we dreamed but the journey was great!

Five thou isn't too bad Matty, if you treat it as if you were compensating for back lash in your table screws you just make sure you always push the head to the same side then as long as you don't heave on the head as you tighten up you should in theory be within one to two thou hopefully.

Wonderful Matty and great stuff Aaron I've been looking forward to seeing this update as you know, dont be hard on yourself you did a bloody great job mate 👍 I'm just glad I've got no quill on my Harrison, otherwise I'd be adding another bloody project to the list ffs lol

man you are very good

That turned out well. I have Bruce Whithem's TrueLine 8 unit. Very similar in concept.

Great video and huge respect for your honesty. I thought of having a vertical rod and a an arm off the side and you measure the distance each time with calipers and tap the head in with a rubber hammer till you get it dialed, measure the distance before you loosen the head then tap it back in once you've set the height. Just an idea. Also @thelazymachinest he uses a laser pointer on the dead accross to the far wall of the shed. Keep up the videos legend.

Hello Matty, I was watching this series with interest as my new Dore Westbury (DW) Mill has a round column, Ade Swash sent me some photos of how he approached it on his DW... they did look similar to your design, I will have to go and look at the photos again. Nice to see the shaper. Take care. Paul,,

Looks great matty, you'll work it out and be on the next project before you know it. Great video.

Well, with a .005 variance it's still better than eyeballing it. Was cool to see it come together even if it didn't meet your expectations. And Aaron really seems to be a decent fellow, I really wish I can come see Australia someday and say hi to you all in person.

Great video mate, even though it wasn't as tip top as you might have liked it was a great thing to see the process and the results. A lot of the stuff we try and achieve does go through prototyping periods and that is all part of getting to a decent end product. I am another bloke here in Aus (Tasmania) with the same lathe as you and an almost identical mill. I have the dovetail type. Looking at yours though i was thinking that it has some definite benefits to it - in that you can swing the head around to get to even more locations on the table than i could. A little while ago i did some reading about tubes vs solid bar, and what they were saying is that you can have a tube that is only slightly larger in OD than a solid rod, and weighs less that the solid rod, and it will be stiffer and stronger than the slightly smaller solid rod (even though the tube ends up weighing less and has less material in it than the solid bar). They went on to talk about the same concept occurring in composite planes, where you can have a truly lightweight foam core covered in tough and strong fibreglass or carbon fiber and you get immense strength and stiffness in relation to the weight of the panel. Long story short, most of the strength of a piece of bar, or any piece of metal, comes mainly from the outer shell of the material - so they reckon anyway. So in terms of a version 2.0, if you were able to go slightly larger in the OD of the brace bar, but move to a piece of tube rather than solid, it might give you more resistance to twisting while not coming with the corresponding cost for sourcing the material, and not weighing way too much. I would be very interested in seeing version 2.0 if you do go ahead with it.

Came here from CEE channel and subscribed. Really like that new lathe. I have a 35 year aerospace machining background and the only suggestion I would give is you need a much larger diameter shaft for stability. For your length of travel I would use a 1.500 dia. shaft. Your design is good just need to beef it up some.

Matty, Thank you so much for the sticker and the post card of Eden. I asked my better half if she believed in Eden and she said it was a place spoke about in the Bible so I told her it was a real place in NSW and showed her the post card and her reaction was like a Kodak moment. She wants to visit Eden some day.

Hey Matty, enjoy all the videos. It's been a while, but when I was at TAFE a long time ago, and using the old shaper as an apprentice, I remember we added 3/4" to the length of the job and that was the required stroke for the shaper. 1/4" past the job, 1/2" behind the job for the clapper to drop back into position. On short jobs not so bad, but that was a lot of material to remove, a little shorter stroke adds up. Hope you find this useful, and thanks for the content.

Have you ever had the idea of doing something like this for the spindle end instead. Like a 10" tool steel rod to go into your spindle say 1/2" diameter then say a 6" high cylinder say something like 2" thick that can clamp anywhere on the table that has a 1/2" bore hole also. Then when you need to higher or lower the column anytime you can use it all to ensure spindle alignment. Just an idea mate.

How about rectangular blocks, shims and dovetail slots with gibs, all made on the mill? Bolt holes aside of course! And, make it big!

I think you are on the right track here, Matty. Just an educated idea for ya, try using a rectangular bar instead of a round bar. The bar should be somewhere around 75x20mm (or more, preferably close to the diameter of the column) with the widest side tangent to the round column. The bar stock should be hardened and tempered high carbon steel for rigidity. You should be able to purchase pre-hardened and ground bar stock if you don't want to harden it, temper it and grind it yourself. The bottom guide block would need to have a bearing surface like aluminum bronze or gray iron for example. I said "Educated idea" because I did something very similar to this a few years ago on a very large industrial mixer (7 ft tall) to prevent the mixing head from rotating on a round column (hydraulic cylinder), it had a round guide bar from the factory but it was flexing too much, the mixing blade was scraping the inside of the drums so I used a large hardened and tempered flat bar and it worked very well in my opinion. The setup was very much like what you have already done on your mill. Anyway, just thought I would share an experience I had with a similar situation. Best of Luck! Joe

Hi Matty .. nice job on the stabiliser , the suggestion I would make if Its ok, is to replace the lower steel bush with a Delrin, or similar block which is bolted on your lower plate to have a very snug tolerance, with a slot & bolt for a tightening of the sliding adjustment, which should remove to close to no movement. & possibly a couple more bolts on the top bracket.

Simple lightweight arms and dial indicator.

I added a similar fixture to my mill using 30x20 rec with ex stability, it will always sway with round.

You gave it a try and although not quite as rigid as you hoped, it will possibly settle in the middle of travel when allowed to. A different steel will make not a material difference as all steels have a very similar stiffness. If you want stiffer you will have to go bigger. Back in the fifties, I think, there was a design of lathe/mill that had a round column and to keep alignment the designer patented a triangular key arrangement. If or when I can remember the name I'll let you know as it might give food for further thought. Just remembered, David Urwick and his Metalmaster lathe mill.

same problem with mine but now works fine after making up blocks top and bottom with adjustable gibs to run on the sides of elevating rack

Could a hydraulic shaft be attached to the column not for actuation but for a stiffer and perhaps a guide which could be aligned with mounts after attachment? At least some of the more accurate fitting would have been provide via within the hydraulic unit itself?

Matty, I take it you have seen the kit Bruce Whitham developed and sells for these round column mills? The essential difference is he uses a rectangular section (6160?) Al bar for stiffening. To keep the costs low as I think you are trying to do, I'd try making the bottom bush longer and maybe weld a section of star dropper from there to the top bush. Cheers Eric

That's a shame it does not work as well as planned! you had a go though and that's the main thing. It will be good to see you come back and revisit this. Cheers, Craig

Maybe not the level of perfection you desired, but definitely not a failure Matty. You also said you learned a lot and that is quite a good thing in and of itself. Just a thought, (I could be very wrong), but that an increase in rod diameter increases rigidity exponentially. That is to say that if you increase from a 7/8" to a 1" rod the rigidity increases a lot more than by just 1/8. Was quite nice see one of your oil cans in use over at CEE.

G'day Matty and thanks for the mention mate. Glad you can put the clamp set to good use. It was too big for anything I own down here. Oh, make sure you wash you hands after touching the packaging, and don't scratch your balls as you might catch "RONA" 🤣. By the way, I loved the shaper action, she's a little ripper isn't she. Nice work on stiffening up the round column mill too. I think you did a marvellous job. Congratulations also on the surge of subscribers taking you past 3K. Very well deserved buddy and you earned everyone of them mate. Cheers, Aaron.

Looks very good and it’s a shame you’re not happy with it I would keep on stabbing at it

Well ya tried ! Maybe in the future you can find a fix for it .. ENJOYED

The Quorn tool grinder Loctite's the column into the base to ensure squarenes of the rod. It is setup on a granite plate. You could do the same here without making a bushing.

Have a look at the bosch axial glide saw for a better way to do this. Basically add a big hinge it's well within your capabilities.

If it doesnt work, at least give it a good paint job. That's the win 🤓💪 (I got a little idea, i think even with bigger rod or double rod we still get some flex + plus bushing tolerance. How about the plate that attach to the head adjustable both ways so the rod can be adjust perfectly parallel with the column. Then only need 1 indicator from the base to the rod to keep it on the same reading everytime the head move to a new position. Sorry my english, hope this make sense 😅).

Most modifications are not quite there first time . Character building i call it ! Cheers .

Bugger. Shame it didn't work Is it due to the bar flexing, or clearances around the shaft?

i'm having the same problem-and i am considering using some beefy linearralis and bearings,sinse i can get hold on them from work..the rails ar allmost 60mm wide,so i think that woud solve 2 problems-one beeing the "floppyness" of the system-mounting the rail directly to the headstock,adn then theese big bearings at the bottom,and the other is straightness,sinse theese things have a very high tolerancerating in straightness,one on each side or pherhaps one in the back and one on the side

Do you think if you fixed the rod to the bottom base casting of the machine, put some adjustment grubs to deal with the uneven surface, that the rod flex would be reduced enough? Maybe you mentioned it somewhere in the video, but that'd be the first thing I'd look at, getting that rod secured at both ends. Otherwise great little build. Cheers from Victoria

gday matty nice job there mate have you looked at other bar shapes like hex or square they would be a lot more ridged than round you already have the top and bottom mounts cheers wayne

"I have not . I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." (Thomas Edison) Permanent fix a laser pen somewhere on the head that points to a wall. Draw a vertical line on that wall where the point is and your machine will be repeatable. Just an idea.

It seems to me a CNC shaper might be interesting; it could run multiple passes and then go ding when it finishes so you could do other stuff in the meantime.

It's still quite "pretty". Experience is the best teacher I've been told. Thanks for the look.

Matty I have been thinking which dangerous ! For my mill I have been researching Linear ball tracks or Linear slider bearings will have to view them for rigidity . Old apprentice from Queensland

Maybe a 2inch round bar would have given the stiffness required?

G’day Matty good to see you mate I hope your health is better. Bloody nice gift he sent you, and I didn’t realise I wasn’t subscribed to you all fixed now. What size is the slitting saw and arbor? Look after yourself kind regards John PS that shaper is at the right speed for me anyway it’s a truly beautiful machine.

If I could get the wobble on my Harbor Freight drill press down to 5 thou, I’d be dancing in the street! Would a second rod make enough difference for you, or do you have another idea?

not sure if it's possible. can you attach the rod to the column top and bottom and make the piece on the head slide?

Use a hardened shaft! That should eliminate flex!

Hard luck Matty You gave it your best shot. I have 2 scenarios in my head, I would value your opinion. What would happen if you doubled up the device with a similar setup on the other side? and used a bigger offset on the rod/rods? the other idea I have is some sort of precision hinged thing with two arms and three pivots. Could use taper rollers so adjust the play to zero. hard to describe. You know the tapping device Abom uses? like two sections of that but vertical. Probably talking bollocks but it is a thought provoking problem. The zero option is to get another mill of course. All the best. Mart in the UK.

A band saw would have made easy work of it Matty. 😂😂😂

I've racked my brains on this issue and I've never figured out a solution

Hi Matty, hope it works for ya after so much tedious work but if does not there is guy in West Australia that has permanent solution for it! Cheers

Great video Matty. Maybe an idea? Instead of one shaft, Why not two parallel shafts? Would two increase the rigidity?

I'm cooking something pretty similar. Nice to see your solution and results. What dia is your guide bar...? 25mm I was thinking two 32mm. what are your thoughts? Are you not locking the head and using the guide 'free'..? I was thinking only unlock the head between operations and using the guide just for readjusting, that should be enough rigidity to have 1 thoh-ish between ops. Are you saying 5 thou between ops?

Gday Matty, what if you make the bottom clamp so you can slide it up the post more mate ?

Damn shame that didn't workout. I'm sure you will come up with something. Regards kevin

Hi Matty is your mill a hm-30 hafco

HI MATTY, O.K. ITS NOT PERFACT, BUT WHOT IS ?. THEAR IS ALLWAYS ROOM FOF IMPROVMENT. I RECON IT IS A GOOD JOB, BETTER THAN BEFOR. REGARDS RICHARD.

matty perhaps duplicate it on the other side should do the trick

G’day Matty. Can’t fit another bar next to it could you or better still a 32mm bar in place of the 7/8”. You haven’t failed you’ve just learnt how not to do it. You fail when you don’t learn from this exercise and do nothing. Keep up the good work mate and did you say it was out by a “bees dick” I’d like to see you measure that:-) Cheers Peter

Also also it's only a failure if you don't learn from it.

Check out “ The Buildist “ channel on you tube. His is similar but different than yours

dude just copy Bruce's it works