CX601 Milling Machine

[brian Rupnow]

Is that Enco's or Busy Bee's 4" machining vise that is a clone of the Kirk? If so, your mill is a bit larger than a Sieg X3!

That vice is a Kurt clone, but it only opens to 2 15/16" maximum, and the jaws are 3.170" long.

[brian Rupnow]

And so, my friends, with the grace of God, the help of a neighbour, and lots of "huffery and puffery", the mill made it's way from my garage, through my office, and into my machine shop this morning. Nothing was dropped or broken, no fingers were crushed, and best of all, it fits into the hole in the wall I had prepared for it. Obviously, there will be some serious rearranging of the shop vac, belt sander, and chest of tooling drawers that were in there with the old smaller mill, but I will make that up as I go along. Thanks to everyone who has followed this long winded thread, and if anyone learned something on my journey, then that is the greatest reward of all. This thread is now ended.---Brian

[Toolguy]

You are going to love using that one! THE END

[sasquatch]

Thanks again Brian to the always interesting and well documented postings you post for us.

[BMW Rider]

Brian, I was doing some work on my mill and decided to change the DRO mount as I found it was not ideal where I had it originally. I made a similar extension arm to yours and mounted it up to the column. Seems a lot better this way, the DRO is more accessible and stays in position regardless of height of the mill head. I welded it up out of scraps from my bin in a bit over an hour this morning. Thanks for the idea.





Now for the reason I had the mill apart. I was doing a quick job yesterday and noticed after chucking an end mill into the collet that there was a crack in the collar of the spindle. I have no idea how long it has been there, nor what may have led to this. I tore it apart yesterday afternoon, and popped over to Busy Bee to see what a replacement would be to get in. I feared the worst and was imagining ways to repair it, but was surprised to find they had two in stock at the warehouse and could have it to me in a couple weeks for $119 and tax. Not too bad, but it raised the question why they are stocking these. I wonder if this has been a common issue, or are they just trying to do a better job of keeping repair parts for the machines they are selling.

The crack extends up all the way into the bearing area of the spindle. It closes up and is hard to spot when the collet is removed, so for the photos I chucked one up to make it show up better. Also, while I have it apart, I think I will "forget" to reinstall the locating pin in the spindle which is actually just a screw with a turned end on it the protrudes into the collet bore.

[RB211]

I've never seen that before in a machine tool... Makes you wonder how!

[EddyCurr]

Inspect for presence of stress risers.

.

[BMW Rider]

Inspect for presence of stress risers.

.

First thing I did once it was apart - no apparent sign of why it would have cracked where it did. Without the collet tightened into it, the crack becomes almost invisible, I can just barely detect it with a fingernail run over it. I would think an event that would cause such a thing would be memorable, and I can't recall any catastrophic operating errors and I'm the only operator on the machine. I can only assume it may be due to a metallurgy problem which goes back to why they may be keeping these in stock.

[brian Rupnow]

BMW rider--thank you for making us aware of this flaw. It must be a common point of failure if BusyBee stocks them. They are not known for having lots of spare parts on hand.---Nice looking DRO support!!!---Brian

[malbenbut]

Shrink a sleeve onto it, it will be ok

MBB

[BMW Rider]

Shrink a sleeve onto it, it will be ok

MBB

That was one idea I had for a repair if a replacement was going to be difficult to obtain. I will hang onto the old one and try that when I have time to play around with repairing it. The main issue I have with shrinking a collar onto the end is that it will make the spindle larger and thus cause possible interference for some work.

[malbenbut]

only needs to be 1/8" thick.

MBB

[BCRider]

Never mind fixing the old one. I'd be shrink fitting a sleeve onto the new one so this doesn't occur all over again.

As he says it only needs to be around a 1/8 wall thickness. But I'd suggest you locate something that has a higher yield point for making the sleeve than mild steel. A good higher tensile value steel would only need to be around a 1/8 wall thickness to hold the spindle together.

[EddyCurr]

I was doing a quick job yesterday and noticed after chucking an end mill into the collet that there was a crack in the collar of the spindle.

The crack extends up all the way into the bearing area of the spindle. ... Also, while I have it apart, I think I will "forget" to reinstall the locating pin in the spindle which is actually just a screw with a turned end on it the protrudes into the collet bore.

I looked at a CX601 briefly yesterday.

The locating pin/screw mounts in a hole drilled in through the side
of the spindle. Where is that hole located circumferentially, relative
to this crack? If situated 180؛ across from the crack, this would be
a curious matter.

.

[BMW Rider]

The pin location is at about 60 degrees to the crack, Not sure what your thoughts are with regards to that.

here is the location of the pin on the shaft.



I marked the location of the pin and the crack on the end of the shaft.