Mounting the reader head bracket on the Y-axis was even more fun...
On a Bridgeport, you normally mount the Y-axis reader head bracket on the saddle. But on the Mllrite, the saddle has a cut-out where the Y axis leadscrew and nut carrier run on the side. So mounting the reader head like a Bridgeport would have required a plate to go lengthwise, then down, and then an angle piece back in to the plane of the scale/reader head.
Mounting the reader head bracket on the nut carrier bar itself would be a lot cleaner, but it's roughly cast iron. Drilling it for the mounting holes was miserable, so I knew that milling the end flat (so the reader head would sit flat), was going to be a problem:

I pulled out a hand scraper, and even with a freshly sharpened carbide blade, it just skipped off the hard casting skin. Even my Biax (power scraper) just ricocheted off it. I thought about using an angle grinder to take off the skin (I know, I know...), and then decided to try something dangerous and stupid: I mounted a 3/8" carbide endmill in the magnetic drill press, mounted the drill press sideways on the knee, and gently skimmed off a couple of tenths at a time by feeding the table in:

After a bunch of passes, I had the nut carrier block cleaned up very nicely:

Which made installing the reader header bracket a breeze:
Last edited by lazlo; 02-02-2009 at 12:36 AM.
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did."