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shamus13

Plastic
Joined
Aug 13, 2021
Hi all,
First post so I thought I would show some of the machines I have here in Yorkshire, UK. First purchase was a AEW Viceroy milling machine. This was stripped and re-built, a DRO added and some gears 3D printed for the missing ones for the X axis power feed. Great machine but biggest negative is the lack of a quill. Hoping soon to make an adaption to add one for drilling and tapping.
Next up was a Viceroy TDS 1/2 PCS lathe. This was pretty much ready to go from the off. First parts made were a number of change gears to allow threading as these were missing and a thread indicator.
The latest toy is an early Churchill NB surface grinder which is going to need a full strip and re-build but was a snip at just £100 as was just sat rotting outside in a yard.

The only option of a manual is from lathes .co.uk which will cost nearly as much as the grinder itself and doesn't cover my early model. So if anyone has a manual and or parts diagram they they would be willing to share it would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers, Shamus

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Shamus:

Welcome to our forum and greetings from the Catskill Mountains of NY State, USA. You have the makings of a basic home machine shop with what you've accumulated. A couple of thoughts:

-re: "making a quill" for your AEW Viceroy milling machine: A common adaptation here in the USA is to add a Bridgeport or 'Bridgeport clone' milling head to a horizontal mill. In many machine shops, horizontal milling machines (particularly the older flat belt driven machines) would fall into dis-use. However, these machines have the makings of a very rigid machine vertical mill. Adapters to mount a Bridgeport type milling head on the overarm (arbor support) are shop made, and the old horizontal mill gets a new lease on life and lots more use. If you can find a used machine tool dealer, industrial surplus shop, or perhaps even a scrapyard find of a vertical head, you can save yourself a lot of work. Making a head from scratch with a moveable quill, rack feed for the quill, and boring the head so the quill is a good fit, is a project in itself. Just making the body of the head is a job (either make patterns and core boxes for a casting, or use welded steel construction). 3D printing won;t get it and hold together for too long in any real working conditions.

Without getting into the finer points of it, making a milling/drilling head with a moveable quill from scratch is a job requiring quite a bit of experience and skill, and having access to a milling machine with boring head, engine lathe (centre lathe) with enough capacity to turn and bore the quill, boring the counterbores for bearings, a milling machine with dividing head and foot stock to mill the splines on the spindle.... lathe to bore the internal taper in the spindle.... and on it goes.
Hunting up a used milling head from another machine tool and making an adapter to mount it is the way to go in my experience.

-re: cost of a manual: Tony Griffiths has provided all of us and the world at large with an incredible site and reference. He does not charge to access his site, and puts an incredible amount of work into maintaining it and updating it. While the cost of reprint of a manual for a machine tool may seem high, consider the work and service Tony Griffiths provides. The rest of the story is that you are working on machine tools that would normally be found in working shops where the cost of a manual reprint would be considered as part of "the cost of doing business". If you got the surface grinder for 100 pounds and it is complete, think in terms of what it might have cost you if some critical parts were missing. Suppose you discovered the grinder were missing its magnetic chuck or perhaps a helical gear, or some other part vital to using it ? You'd be shelling out money to buy parts or paying an engineering works to make what you could not make yourself. You got a complete heavily built surface grinder for 100 pounds, appearing complete. There is an old saying in the USA: "If you wanna play, you gotta pay".

The rest of the story is that when we work on older machine tools, quite often there is no manual. This is where 'reverse engineering' comes into play. Namely, if a part is missing, we measure the mating parts and distances and design the replacement part. It may mean doing 'gear math', and it may mean using welded steel
construction vs an original casting. When no wiring diagrams exist, we get the 'multi meter' and some 'wire markers' (if the wires are un marked) and we 'ring out'
the wires and draw a wiring diagram, figuring out the wiring.

By way of example: just last week, a local machine shop where my nephew is apprenticed called me up. They have about an 18" swing LeBlond Regal lathe that suddenly started tripping the circuit breaker every time the control lever was moved to switch on the motor. They had paperwork and manuals from the time they bought the lathe new from LeBlond in the 1960's. With it all there was NO wiring diagram. My bro and I got into it and in about 15 minutes, identified the problem as a phase-to-phase short circuit in the stator windings of the motor. It's like playing detective or tracking game in the woods, you start with the simplest things first and work from there. Of course, we made sure, first thing, to put our padlock on the disconnect switch for the power to the lathe, locking the switch in the 'open' position. A few minutes work with a multimeter and then a meg-ohm meter ("Megger") to confirm what the pocket-sized multimeter told us and we had the diagnosis. We identified the power supply wiring to the reversing switch, identified the switch terminals for the power to the motor and made sure the short was not in the switch, then checked the wiring between the reversing switch and the motor for faults (none found), and then moved to the motor itself. It's a matter of thinking clearly,
using an orderly process, and starting with the simplest things first. Most machinery or vehicles will have clues as to how things go together and come apart, and also have clues as to how things are working/wearing. A manual is handy, but even if you had one, it is not uncommon for a machine tool manual to be 'generic' and skip
things like electrical wiring as different users may run different control schemes, different voltages, etc.

The motor on that LeBlond lathe (a "Servo Shift" headstock model) was oil soaked from a leak in the Servoshift hydraulics. It is an open-frame motor and aside from the oil bath, had plenty of metal chips in the air vent slots in the stator housing. The lathe had seen about 50 years of use in more of a toolroom type setting, so not too improbable for the hydraulics to piss oil and chips to wind up in the windings. The motor will be sent to a service shop, and depending on price, may well be replaced with a new motor. That machine shop covers 50,000 square feet of floor space, plenty of work, and having the LeBlond lathe down is not something they can afford to let slide. While there is no immediate work for that lathe, they do not want to be caught with it out of action should a job come in for it. We do fine without a specific manual, and this is what is often the case when you go to service or repair machine tools, particularly old ones. Again, my hat is off to Tony Griffiths, and while the cost of the manual may seem high, consider the service Tony Griffiths provides. Without him, you might well have no access to a reprint manual, and no access to ready reference as to the history and design characteristics of more manufacturers and machine tools than we can count.
 
Great machine but biggest negative is the lack of a quill. Hoping soon to make an adaption to add one for drilling and tapping.

Some food for thought:

Schaublin made a through-spindle sensitive drilling attachment for the standard quill-less vertical head. Also made by Aciera (F3) and Christen.

See: http://www.lathes.co.uk/christen/
and: https://frylundsmaskinforum.dk/fagteori/index.php?topic=1896.0
and: https://pdfslide.net/documents/aciera-f3-drilling-spindle-3.html
and: https://www.usinages.com/threads/module-percage-rapide-aciera-f3.110772/
and this (ugly but clever): https://www.mig-welding.co.uk/forum/threads/aciera-f3-grease-or-oil.101083/

Drawings for the Schaublin one are available I think at the usinages site. They actually made two versions, the older one located in tapered part of the 30 taper spindle. The later one uses a spindle nose cap that would be easier to make.
 

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If I remember I had seen one or more Churchill surface grinders had air bearing spindles needing a supply of compressed air to run the spindle .
I can't tell from your picture if yours does or not so you might want to be sure you know what care is required for the type of spindle bearings you have before you power it up and give it a test spin.
I have a Churchill cylindrical grinder that has an air bearing but it is waiting for me to clean it up so I can't comment on it right now.
The other Churchill cylindrical grinder I have has tapered bronze spindle bearings and uses a special spindle oil .
It also is waiting for me to finish cleaning it up.
I can't help with a manual for your machine but if you can get some more detailed pictures of it before trying to start it up some one on this forum or the Abrasive Machining section may be able to offer some general guidance as to how to proceed based on how other similarly made machines are cared for .
I think I have some information for my machines but haven't looked at it for a long time.
I don't often look at the Abrasive Machining section myself since I usually just follow the Antique section.
Jim
P.S. this newer one than yours has the auxiliary air tank and filter like one of my cylindrical grinders for the air spindle bearings.
Maybe someone more tech capable than me can save the pictures to this site in case they go away .
 
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If I remember I had seen one or more Churchill surface grinders had air bearing spindles needing a supply of compressed air to run the spindle .
I can't tell from your picture if yours does or not so you might want to be sure you know what care is required for the type of spindle bearings you have before you power it up and give it a test spin.
I have a Churchill cylindrical grinder that has an air bearing but it is waiting for me to clean it up so I can't comment on it right now.
The other Churchill cylindrical grinder I have has tapered bronze spindle bearings and uses a special spindle oil .
It also is waiting for me to finish cleaning it up.
I can't help with a manual for your machine but if you can get some more detailed pictures of it before trying to start it up some one on this forum or the Abrasive Machining section may be able to offer some general guidance as to how to proceed based on how other similarly made machines are cared for .
I think I have some information for my machines but haven't looked at it for a long time.
I don't often look at the Abrasive Machining section myself since I usually just follow the Antique section.
Jim
P.S. this newer one than yours has the auxiliary air tank and filter like one of my cylindrical grinders for the air spindle bearings.
Maybe someone more tech capable than me can save the pictures to this site in case they go away .
Thanks for your input Jim. I've had the head apart and can confirm it runs on tapered bronze bearings. The oil sits at the rear and feeds through a channel to the rear bearing and the front lower bearing (from what it appears). The top front bearing is fed from a small reservoir sitting above it with a small air bleed screw. Here's a couple of pics of this area and the affixed plate. Cheers.

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Make sure you use “ Velvus 3 “ in the Hydrauto bearings. I once spent several days fault finding on a big “ Churchill “ cylindrical grinder with those bearings. It was grinding 10” dia shafts with a finish like a “ three penny bit “. I tried everything to no avail. then I asked the operator if he’d changed the oil recently. He said “ Yes, I used that DTE light “ or some other common light oil. When we changed the grinding spindle oil back over to ” Velvus 3 “ again everything was perfect. “ Velvus 3 “ is like water by the way.

Regards Tyrone
 
I was able to get a couple of pictures of my spindle head on the machine with the bronze bearings that is made in a similar style .
I'll look for the information on my machine in a few days and if you don't find a manual for yours maybe mine will be of some help.
Hopefully you can find the right oil without having to buy a huge quantity .
It will be some time before I can tackle setting mine up again.
 

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Thanks for the tip on oil Tyrone, I'll make sure it gets the correct oil.

Thanks for posting the pics Jim. Apart from the shape it seems a similar setup but the oil sump, filler and drain plug on mine sit at the rear of the spindle with a separate reservoir and air bleed at the front. Any info from your manual would be helpful as I'm looking at other Churchill grinders from the same era which are showing some similar parts not used on the later NB grinder.
 
There’s a guy on a “ Canadian woodworking site “ that bought a surface grinder just like yours only of a more recent manufacture about 5 years ago. Maybe you could seek him out.
Regards Tyrone.
 
I took a look too see what info. I had on my machine but haven't found it so far so hopefully some one will turn up something for your machine .
I'll look again for mine but if it doesn't turn up I'll just have to figure things out as I go along.
I have had a lot of different grinding machines apart over the years so I'm not too worried about having to work on the machine with out it.
Jim
 
I took a look too see what info. I had on my machine but haven't found it so far so hopefully some one will turn up something for your machine .
I'll look again for mine but if it doesn't turn up I'll just have to figure things out as I go along.
I have had a lot of different grinding machines apart over the years so I'm not too worried about having to work on the machine with out it.
Jim
Thanks for looking Jim, much appreciated. I think I'm struggling more with the surface grinder as I have zero experience or knowledge with them, not even knowing the correct names for the controls or parts. At least with the mill and lathe I had some basic experience so could refurbish them. I'm sure the controls on it are standard for a surface grinder but compared to the mill and my lack of knowledge there seems so many of these controls.
 
Since I didn't find any book for my machine so far I thought I'd take a few pictures of my machine to give you an idea of the sort of setup you may find inside your machine if you haven't opened it up yet.
Mine has been stored for a long time .
Yours may have some more gear in there if it has an automatic down feed on the vertical head .
Being a cylindrical grinder mine only had 2 axis powered feeds
The belt driven hydraulic pump would appear to be on the left hand side instead of the right like it is on mine.
There are other things in the way in front and behind my machine so I can't get in there to get a better view of the inside at the moment.
Mine had a broken counter weight lever to keep the wheel head from advancing on its own into the work .
I it may have been done by someone forcing the cross feed screw or perhaps since it wasn't secured before moving may have been damaged going over a bump on the way to my place.
Jim
 

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Thanks for taking the time to post pictures, I agree that you can see similarities in castings, etc. I will take and post some photo's of mine when I get into the guts a bit more.
 








 
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