Hello to all..

[watermole]

..and thank you for allowing me to join this forum!

A few briefs words about me..
i was finally put out to grass two years ago after 56 years working in factories as a semi-skilled labourer. A few years ago I bought an old, virtually scrap Myford which had been smashed up and abandoned tothe weather. It was part of a house clearance and knowing nothing about this machine, carried it home piece at a time and slowly remade it, taught myself how to use it, making a huge amount of mistakes and scrap along the way!
i have recently bought a much mistreated and abused Amolco milling attachment and am currently working on the rebuild of it and although I can now manage some turning, still have much to learn about milling.
it was through searching for information about operating the Amolco, that I discovered this forum!
i haven’t made any models yet, but have made several items of fishing tackle and am planning to make a stationery steam engine.
Looking forward to learning from you all and taking part.
with kind regards..

[silverfox]

Watermole

Welcome.Lots of advice on here ..just ask. What model Myford have you?

Regards the milling, IIRC the Amolco has a taper? to accept drill chucks etc

Not sure what you have in the way of tooling, but would seriously suggest you look at getting a set of ER25 colletts fron someone like ARC and the holder ( make up a drawbar if you havent got one)
Another thing is that colletts can be used with the fitting that goes onto to mandrel thread to hold round stock for turning,although in this cas the complete set of metric colletts would be needed.They are well worth the expense
And finally another wallet buster!! is have a look at the Greenwood tools site and get their Dickson QC tool holder. Once you set up each individual cutter it is seconds ( as quick as a F1 pit stop) to change cutters.

I would steer well clear of the cheap end mill holders that hold the endmills by two allen screws. you will find that thew end mills do glacial effort at escaping over a long cut and you end up with all manner of wired shapes.
Look forward to your posts
Best wishes

Ron

( i too have a shed load of pieces that at one stage would actually be an engine!!, but it is the only way to learn)

[Deleted]

Welcome to the forum sir

Pete

[watermole]

Many thanks for your kind words gentlemen..much appreciated!

My Myford is a Super 7 and dates from either 1953 or 1954. It is the model with the oil reservoir above the headstock front bearing and leaky sight glass!
Unfortunately, it was badly treated, the clutch was smashed and it was just abandoned to its fate.. When the owner sadly died, a neighbour told me about it as it was going to the dump as part of house clearance. I took it home in pieces and have managed to rebuild it, but the bed has been rather scored up and generally in poor shape.
It works now, but would benefit from a proper bed rescrape and everything set up again.

There was a 3-jaw chuck fitted, with internal jaws only, so I have bought a set of external jaws and a 4-jaw independent for it, together with an (expensive) Myford, 4-way toolpost, a faceplate and fixed steady.
My tooling so far, is a large amount of HSS sticks, to grind my own with, three different sized boring bars from 5mm to 10mm and a DCMT insert turning tool.

The Amolco milling attachment is a very substantial piece of kit for n comparison and quite heavy. It has an internal MT2 taper and threaded outside the same as the lathe.
So far., I have bought a set of five, metric collets from Germany at £55+ but they are well made. The thread is M10 iso and because the bore at the top of the spindle is only 5/16”, I have turned down a piece of M10 studding to make a special drawbar which is fitted from underneath and a tensioning knob screwed down from the top.

I have bought some carbide cutters from 1mm to 12mm and they all have shanks which fit one of my collets. Drill chuck is an Albrecht 3-13mm and I have another which holds from 0.3mm to 6mm with a parallel 10mm shank.

I actually gave the milling attachment motor a test run today..it seems to get very hot in no time, so I am wondering if it is OK? The plate reads:- Brook Crompton Parkinson 2.3 amps, 1425 rpm Hawker-Siddeley.

Many thanks again...willkeep you updated on further progress!