I got an old Cincinnati (horizontal?) Mill with speed traverse. I have never used a mill before, but the guy I got it from showed me the basics (this lever, up. This lever, down. Dial change speed..... You get the idea). After a painstaking adventure getting the beast home, and figuring out how the hell I was going to get it operational on my little chunk of single-phase nowhere, USA, I filled all the reservoirs, greased the **it out of every moving part, and fired her up. Everything was looking (and sounding) good. Moved the table around a bit. Tested all the speeds. Everything checked out.... Until I tried the speed traverse..... There was a soft "clunk" from inside somewhere, and the spindle "disengaged" for lack of a better term. It didn't just stop, but gradually slowed to a halt. The motor was still running. The drive still engaged. Just no spin. Upon further investigation I found it would engage on some speeds, but not all. So I opened up the 9,000,000lbs door to have a look (mind you, I am pretty mechanically inclined, and an excellent problem solver/troubleshooter, but this is new territory. I used an old winch to hold the weight of the door so I could crack it open and look inside). Best I can tell, the little arm were not lined up properly to rest in the recesses of the shifting gears. I have managed to get it back together, about six times..... The trouble is I don't know what speed to have the dial on in correlation with the position of the gears when I get the door closed. Moreover, it seems more often than not when I do close the door one of the arms and or gears moves ever so slightly because I'm literally holding the door up with a winch and trying to finagle it in, thus putting me right back to square one where when I adjust the speed the spindle only engages about 1/3 of those speeds and it never changes speed it just goes the same one or two speeds. So is there a tool or a trick, something to make sure that the arms and the gears stay put when I go to close the door? And what speed should the dial be set to? And what position should all the mechanisms be resting in when I go to close her up?
Any and all help, ideas, suggestions are greatly appreciated. I'm about to open it up so I can post some pictures of just exactly what I'm looking at.
~ Neverin
Any and all help, ideas, suggestions are greatly appreciated. I'm about to open it up so I can post some pictures of just exactly what I'm looking at.
~ Neverin