Hi All,
I'm a long term lurker, first time poster. I'm having a issue with my new Bridgeport clone mill (it's a varispeed mill, branded a Condor, but has no info plate. I think it is a 2VS or 3VS type).
There is a lot of friction in the system, and i've not been able to get it to start on my rotary phase converter. I initially suspected the RPC, but having tried to turn the mill's motor by hand (it was very very stiff), i realised that there must be a serious a friction related problem in the mill.
Having had the drive system apart, i found two problems, the first was the small bull gear wasn't fixed high enough on the shaft, so when the top bearing plate was screwed down, there was a high side load on the bearings making it hard to turn. This would have caused high friction in low gear, and (hopefully) i have it sorted now.
The second problem (high friction in high gear) has me stumped: The large bull gear is rubbing on the cover plate that sits above it. It was severly crudded up, with hard gunge and metal shards, which i've cleaned off now, but it is still rubbing. I've checked that the gear lever splined shaft is correctly installed (moving to the 'next' cog makes the vertical movement of the bull gear miles off where it should be). It looks like it's only 1 millimetre or so that the bull gear needs to be lowered by to stop hitting the cover plate. I wondered whether the gear shift lever might be slightly off, but there is a roll-pin keeping that in position along with a cap-head screw. (A bodge solution might be to take the roll pin out, rotate by about 90 degrees, then fine-tune the angle of the splined gear select shaft, holding it in position with the screw, then take it out and re-drill a new hole in the shaft for a roll-pin). I'm reticent to do this before i've exhausted any other causes of the bull gear being too high. The other thing that confuses me is that when the bull gear is set to low-speed, it looks to be in a good position to mesh with the small bull gear (if anything it is slightly too low - the top of the large bull gear is about 0.5mm lower than the top of the small bull gear).
Apologies for the tolstoyesque brain dump, but any help would be gratefully appreciated.
Thanks in advance, Nat
PS, i have googled and googled, but can only find one other mention of the large bull gear rubbing on the plate, but there was no suggestion as to why, or how to fix it.
I'm a long term lurker, first time poster. I'm having a issue with my new Bridgeport clone mill (it's a varispeed mill, branded a Condor, but has no info plate. I think it is a 2VS or 3VS type).
There is a lot of friction in the system, and i've not been able to get it to start on my rotary phase converter. I initially suspected the RPC, but having tried to turn the mill's motor by hand (it was very very stiff), i realised that there must be a serious a friction related problem in the mill.
Having had the drive system apart, i found two problems, the first was the small bull gear wasn't fixed high enough on the shaft, so when the top bearing plate was screwed down, there was a high side load on the bearings making it hard to turn. This would have caused high friction in low gear, and (hopefully) i have it sorted now.
The second problem (high friction in high gear) has me stumped: The large bull gear is rubbing on the cover plate that sits above it. It was severly crudded up, with hard gunge and metal shards, which i've cleaned off now, but it is still rubbing. I've checked that the gear lever splined shaft is correctly installed (moving to the 'next' cog makes the vertical movement of the bull gear miles off where it should be). It looks like it's only 1 millimetre or so that the bull gear needs to be lowered by to stop hitting the cover plate. I wondered whether the gear shift lever might be slightly off, but there is a roll-pin keeping that in position along with a cap-head screw. (A bodge solution might be to take the roll pin out, rotate by about 90 degrees, then fine-tune the angle of the splined gear select shaft, holding it in position with the screw, then take it out and re-drill a new hole in the shaft for a roll-pin). I'm reticent to do this before i've exhausted any other causes of the bull gear being too high. The other thing that confuses me is that when the bull gear is set to low-speed, it looks to be in a good position to mesh with the small bull gear (if anything it is slightly too low - the top of the large bull gear is about 0.5mm lower than the top of the small bull gear).
Apologies for the tolstoyesque brain dump, but any help would be gratefully appreciated.
Thanks in advance, Nat
PS, i have googled and googled, but can only find one other mention of the large bull gear rubbing on the plate, but there was no suggestion as to why, or how to fix it.