Powerfeeds for Your Gingery Miller
The other axis can be similarily set up if you want to have horizontal feed when using the miller to do lathe work.
Powerfeeds for Your Gingery Miller |
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Let’s call this the X axis as it is perpendicular to the spindle. The driver is a modified electric screwdriver driving an acme-threaded Delrin worm. It meshes with a 40 tooth wormwheel with a matching thread. The worm and wheel were made at home using a piece of 1/2 inch-10 tpi acme-threaded rod to make a hobb (just a homemade tap), for cutting the teeth on the wheel. The worm was made on the lathe with a single point acme shaped HSS bit. The tap and a wormwheel are shown here. |
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A couple of pics from different angles show the arrangement of the parts. In mine, a taper pin keys the wormwheel to the handwheel. The wormwheel is free to turn on the leadscrew shaft. The handwheel is fixed to the leadscrew shaft with a set screw. Thus the taper pin acts as a clutch -- insert it for powerfeed, remove it for manual feed. | ||||||||||
| The power feed is variable speed through use of a variable voltage power source (small DC supply). This gives a pretty good control of most milling operations by eliminating the tiresome turning of a crank by hand. Even so, the power feed is too slow for fast return etc. so the taper pin is handy. The other axis can be similarily set up if you want to have horizontal feed when using the miller to do lathe work. |
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| Richard 2004 | |||||||||||