Power feed for my Sheldon/Vernon horizontal mill

[Bob Engelhardt]

My Sheldon mill came with mechanical power feed: a 3-step pulley on the back end of the spindle drove a shaft running along the right side of the mill. That shaft drove a worm that could be engaged with a worm gear on the feed screw. That worm & its carrier made the conversion to DC motor drive really easy. The mechanical drive:

The carrier (1) pivots on a stud (4) in the knee. I took off the pulleys, shafting, & their mounts, keeping just the worm & its carrier. I milled the bottom of the carrier flat & parallel to the worm's shaft & tapped 2 holes:

I took a small 24v motor from an electric scooter (I think), made a bracket to hold it and made slotted gears:


(5 upload limit reached - continued)

[Bob Engelhardt]

I love the simplicity of it:



I got a 24v controller for it & put it in a box:


I calibrated the controller's pot in IPM. There's a toggle switch for direction and a momentary switch for rapid override. The rapid override uses 48v on the 24v motor to move things along. I picked 2 IPM for the lowest feed & I'm thinking that lower might have been better. Time will tell.

Using the original worm made things really simple & easy. Another advantage is that the original feed had a kick-out that disengaged the feed when tripped. This still works with the DC conversion.

[sid pileski]

Nice looking conversion!

Sid

[Tim Clarke]

Wow, thats pretty slick, Bob. As you may know, I have the same mill. Thanks for posting!

[mickeyf]

Thank you - I've been trying to figure out how to make a power feed for my RF40 type mill, this has given me some new (and better) ideas. I have several potentially suitable motors, but have been stumbling over the best way to connect one while still allowing manual feeding.