Milling machine as a mortiser

[Clint Baxter]

Chris, that is my concern. I think the quill is strong enough, but the morse taper is not designed for lateral forces, and will drop out. At the same time I wonder if technique can overcome this - for example, plunging down along the mortice, and only cleaning up when there is minimal material to remove?

Note that I am not considering the drill press as a mill (such as levelling metals), but rather to "mill", that is, clean out the wooden waste in mortises.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Derek, have you considered getting the slot mortising attachment for the Hammer A3-31? A possible solution for what you're trying to do.

Clint

[Wes Grass]

Oh, and there are milling machines with Morse taper spindles. They use a drawbar, no tang.

[Bill Dufour]

Oh, and there are milling machines with Morse taper spindles. They use a drawbar, no tang.

My Jet Mini mill is mt3 with a drawbar. Probably made around 1976.
BillD

[Wes Grass]

Hopefully, they have a cap on the spindle retaining the drawbar ... so unscrewing it pops the tool from the spindle.

Otherwise, it's 'tapping' on it with a hammer ... which *destroys* bearings long term.

[Bill Dufour]

AFAIK you have to make your own nut cage etc to make it a self ejecting drawbar. R8 tends to fall out on its own. Most other milling taper sare much more angled and tend to fall out on their own. Except for the extinct B+S taper.
Full size mills can have the taper reground to something better in some cases.
Bill D

[Bruce Page]

My Lagun mill uses R8 collets. That, and every Bridgeport I have ever run (dozens of them) that used R8 collets required a tap on the drawbar to break the collet free.

[Bob Vaughan]

For furniture sized work I can cut perfect square end mortises with the Maka in about 4-5 seconds each

I've rebuilt a few of those in years past and know this to be quite true. It just has to be seen to be believed. With a longer bit for deep mortises, the time might extend to 5-7 seconds. Might.

A full size mill still isn't a good woodworking machine except for fussy little precision details and even then, dust collection is a must. I've tried it for mortises once. It's rather slow and the time it takes to make the tenon round isn't worth the trouble.

M&T vm - 1.jpg

[Joe Calhoon]

Agree that a mill is useful for some odd woodworking tasks but would not want it for a mortiser. In my works I have a Maka and a nice vintage HC. It’s a good combination for the work I do. The HC is good for one off work and small mortises. The Maka flys on production jobs.

[Wes Grass]

No flanged drawbar and retaining nut I could find for the Max' V-10. He bought one of the oddball collets for the lathe spindle, and then made an adapter nose for 6-K collets. I kinda remember he had to grind a bit of clearance in the spindle as well.

And replaced most of the die-cast handwheels with cast iron. There's no way I could estimate the number of bent and machined brass wires we made for HP. Some sort of RF 'mixer. Black magic...

I bought a 40 taper Lagun. Mod'd the drawbar and drive keys to use my CAT holders. And then mod'd an R-8 right angle head to drive with the 'Cat' spindle.

[Wes Grass]

R-8 .. a couple brand new mills with brand new collets would pop right out. Given some use, maybe with people not keeping them perfectly clean... they get tiny dimples in the taper. And then they need the tap.

The taper angle, 8deg?, the Sin/Cos/Tan is the coefficient of friction for steel on steel?

[Wes Grass]

Duh, it's the Clausing 8520 that has the collar to eject the collets, MT 2.

[stephen thomas]

He bought one of the oddball collets for the lathe spindle, and then made an adapter nose for 6-K collets.

That was a strange choice.
AFAIK, 6K only fits the South Bend 10K ("light 10" ") lathe, and maybe some oddball indexer or dividing head ISTR. Really, nearly nothing but the 10K lathes, and people with a 10K will pay for them. It is also a weird collet with a slot in the side of one jaw to slide over/engage a roll pin sideways through the nose taper. (rather than the stem/shank)

It sounds like there may have been enough room to adapt a slightly more common 4c, or even maybe the cheap and ubiquitous 5c system?

[Wes Grass]

Maximat V-10. It's rather puny. No way a 5c could be used.

Swapping pieces out on my Graziano pushed me to a D1-4 spindle mounted collet chuck. Going thru the motions of mounting the lever collet closer for a one off was just dumb.

[Wes Grass]

Ummm, yeah ...

A drive pin in the taper of the collet nose vs a key in the cylindrical body, and sometimes a remnant of milling it left in the thread, ala 5c.

2 piece adapter he made, hardened and then ground in place on the spindle.

Far more ambitious than I'd ever be ... but ... then there's the stuff my grandfather left behind. Drill press, looks like a couple castings and the rest from barstock? And a bench vise most likely from solid bar. Doesn't clamp very well. The fit between the jaw and body is too tight. I remember my dad demonstrating with a 1/2" bar, flipping the handle to lock it and it bounced back open.

[johnny means]

We use a Bridgeport everyday in the shop for wood and metal and plastics. Gumming up is absolutely not a problem, they are made to operate in rather filthy conditions. Also, the speed range is perfectly adequate for wood, especially for larger cutters, which require lower speeds anyway.