Unknown milling machine! Help me to recognize it!

Discussion on all milling machines vertical & horizontal, including but not limited to Bridgeports, Hardinge, South Bend, Clausing, Van Norman, including imports.

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Jaxian
Posts: 154
Joined: Fri Mar 15, 2013 1:38 am

Re: Unknown milling machine! Help me to recognize it!

Post by Jaxian »

The vertical head is a Universal Spiral Milling Attachment. Used mostly for cutting bevel gears or spiral gears if you have a universal dividing head. They run at spindle speed. No reason to run involute gear cutters any faster. The only head that is over spindle speed is the high speed vertical heads, one with a quill, one without. The fastest is still only 1-2/3 base spindle speed. Horizontals are about large cuts and low rpms.

I have one of these Attachments so have had quite a bit of time to assess it. The small post sticking out of the end is supposed to be full sized to fit in the arbor support at the end of the horizontal overarm for rigidity while cutting gears. I guess it was turned down with the horizontal overarm absent it would just be in the way. No idea why they would leave a little bit of the shaft left over.

The overarm for a No.2 Cincinnati horizontal is very easy to find in the US, not as cheap as you might like but you could probably pick up a whole machine for a few hundred bucks non running just to pull off the parts you are missing.

Downside being that the overarm is a precision fit. While one bought separate will fit in it will not be too accurate if it is not scrapped in to match the machine dovetail. That can be a pain as the overarms are heavy even on the smaller horizontal machines.

Glancing at the pictures I would guess it is a 2MI with a Universal table and not a Dial Type. If it was one of those the left side of the machine would look different. Either 2 dials on a square background for early models ('20s-'30s) or 2 dials on a triangular background (40's era). The later machines had one big dial. Post 1959 it would have had a motor in the knee for feeds so it's earlier than that. I am not an expert on when they put different features on the 2MI machines. Lacking a direct side shot of the left size with the feeds and speeds it's hard to tell.

Hopefully this information helps a bit as far as chasing down exact year and model. The serial number will tell the exact year and type. It is usually on the right side of the face of the column up near the top. Stamped. That is on Dial types so again if it's an MI or a special it might be different.

You can run end mill holders directly out of the spindle behind that Spiral Attachment if you take it off. It will be able to take a substantially heavier cut there. The Spiral Attachment was never meant for hogging, there are other vertical heads that can be used for that. You can even use Cat 40 or Cat 50 tooling from CNC's if you modify one of the drive lugs on the spindle (just shorten one as CNC Cat holders are asymmetrical for indexing boring bars and such).

I would recommend that as it will open your performance envelope greatly. Also tooling will be vastly easier to find if that is a standard Universal Milling Attachment with the Brown & Sharpe #10 spindle size. Cat and NMTB 40 (or 50) stuff is everywhere, B&S is scarce.
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