Hardinge tm mill vertical attachment

[Nathan Machinist]

Hello everyone one. Im looking for attachments for a hardinge tm mill i just got. I would like to get a vertical head, servo power feed for x axis and collets. Any advice on this mill or tooling i can get a hold of would be great. Thanks, nathan

[DR]

I have a tm mill out of the machine shop of a WWII liberty ship. Bought it from the ship yard when they were scrapping the ship. A hundred bucks, they had it advertised as a "hard hinge machine". Probably had never been used, missing loose items like the 1" arbor which Hardinge still had at the time for $300. That was thirty years ago though.

The factory made vertical heads are hard to find, almost in the rare category. 4C collets for the head are also hard to find. From a usage standpoint a better solution is to put a Bridgeport M head on the mill. The M head has a quill feed making it more versatile than the factory head. With the factory head the table has to be cranked up/down to do a simple operation like drilling a hole (a pain).

Watch eBay and Craigslist, once in awhile parts come up. I got a factory X axis power feed there. The power feed lessened table travel by about 2" so users removed them sometimes.

A problem in getting parts/accessories any more is you might be competing with deep pocket collectors. A few years back a fully loaded, mint condition tm on eBay went for $18,000!!! That price was way beyond the machine's usefulness.

[Toolguy]

I would go with a BP J head if possible. I don't know if it would fit or not. The J head is much more desirable than the M head, though.

[DR]

The J head would be way too large IMO.

[studentjim]

Here is a link to a guy who has a lot of parts for Hardinge lathes and milling machines. He had a vertical head for a Hardinge TM milling machine a couple months ago. Not cheap though. [email protected]

[Nathan Machinist]

Thanks for all the help everyone! Im going to look around and sed what i can find. Im not afraid to do some building so the bridge port idea might work well.

[ken]

Jim it's good to see Lee is still around Ken