A portable drilling/milling head project

[S_J_H]

I just finished this project. It is of course a small drilling and milling head with a rack and pinion quill. The motor is from a mini lathe.
The housing was taken from an old cheap import drill press. I cut it down and boxed it in. Then indicated the quill dead level and flycut the mounting surface.
It originally had a mt2 tapered spindle.
I made a new spindle out of some 1144 stress proof. It is a 3/8" end mill holder type spindle.
The spindle has 1 bearing at each end of the quill cartridge and I added a bearing preload nut. The splined drive has 2 bearings.
I built this unit primarily for my HBM/lathe machine.
Steve

[Alistair Hosie]

interesting looking project well done regards Alistair

[lazlo]

Nice job Steve. Is that Hammerite-brand metal flake paint you're using?

[S_J_H]

Thanks guys,
Yes, blue hammerite. I like this paint. Touching up chipped areas is practically invisible with this stuff.

Steve

[PHiers]

Very nice work. I keep thinking I should tackle something like this someday.

[oil mac]

Steve,
Your project on this little horizontal boring mill, is most exemplary in finish in your excellent design and thinking You have "shrunk the best of heavy engineering practice", down to the home workshop fraternity, That in conjunction with your milling & drilling head, gives you a most useful machine tool, I think we all envy your talent Very well done.

[knedvecki]

Nicely done. Thank you for posting the pictures. I have proposed plans to mount my Barker Mill Column to lathe's carriage T-slots with a slide to move in the Y axis. This would allow me to machine flats and spirals and indexing using the gearing on parts mounted between centers up to 8 ft long

[Teenage_Machinist]

Nice work. One idea thouh, looks like the motor might collide with various things unless rotated the other way.

[S_J_H]

Thanks again guys. I plan on doing a future thread showing everything the machine can do.

Nice work. One idea thouh, looks like the motor might collide with various things unless rotated the other way.

I can see how you thought that in the first pics. The motor is totally out of the way of everything.
Here are some better pics showing the milling head. I have a preset z-axis stop on the main column for repeatable lathe work/tooling. The milling head is on center to that stop. It can be mounted at any angle without interference. The quill has 2" of travel as well.
Steve

[Teenage_Machinist]

That is... better than I thought.

If I were building my own, I would move both motors, but that does not appear neccesary.