Identifying a mill...

[Zerobeat]

Hi!

Just drug home my new-to-me bench mill from HGR. I know that it was made by Rong-Fu, but I'm trying to determine whether it's a rf-31, or a rf-25.
It has a R8 spindle taper, is currently equipped with a Dayton 3/4hp, 3ph motor, and is marked as a MSC 9512018. No luck finding documentation for it by that number, I do have a Rong-Fu manual for the rf31.
What are the differences to look for. I'm not expecting miracles out of the machine, yet I don't want to over work it by mistake.

Thanks in advance for the help!

Tom

[wlw-19958]

Hi There,

This is a guess but the "MSC" may be "Manhattan Supply Company" or
just MSC Industrial Supply Co. You may want to contact them and see
if they can help.

Good Luck!
-Blue Chips-
Webb

[Zerobeat]

Hi There,

This is a guess but the "MSC" may be "Manhattan Supply Company" or
just MSC Industrial Supply Co. You may want to contact them and see
if they can help.

Good Luck!
-Blue Chips-
Webb

And a fine guess it is. It is, in fact, the above mentioned company, and I've been waiting on an email from their Customer Service to see if they can help. I thought I'd cast out a line here, as well.

Thank you for the suggestion!

Tom

[pete]

Fwiw most any machine will tell you right away if your asking it to take a cut that's larger than it was designed for. Even more so for the round column mills. There capable of much more than most give them credit for if you go by George Britnells? work with his over many years. The Shereline Craftsmanship museum shows some of it. But it takes a great deal of experience to wring the best out of them and do what he has. Depths of cut and feeds are directly related to the sharpness, cutting tool materials and angles. All High Speed steel and Carbide isn't created equal and the cheaper it is the more frustrating it will be. The Chinese and India can and do make very good quality cutting tools if you could even find them over here. But that much higher quality will put the prices up where the European and U.S. made tooling is anyway. And you wont be finding it at Shars, Horrible Freight, or even Grizzly. To give yourself and that mill half a chance then buy the very best cutting tools you can afford.

I guess it's project related but I'd have to consider any mill only half a machine without a boring head. The offshore ones can be made to work but stay away from those cheap 6 or 9 pc braised carbide boring bar sets. The carbide itself is junk and the tools geometry is all wrong. Shop made or bought flycutters can be pretty cheap as a larger diameter cutting tool, but just remember there not designed or meant to do hogging cuts. That single tooth can and will hammer your spindle bearing to death at larger depths of cut fairly quick. There meant to mostly do finishing cuts. And unless you get a lot luckier than I've been I'd be real careful about buying any of the cheap Kurt clone vise knock offs. There's many threads around about some of the horrors inside them.

If you don't already have them then getting a good dial indicator, magnetic base, and a 10ths reading dial test indicator should be high on your list as well. You'll need them for many jobs and the first will be to tram the head to the table which might require many trial tests by shimming the column mount. Then tramming in the vise square to the table travel. A set of decent parallel's, drill chuck, edge finder and R8 collets should be high on your list as well. Sorry I can't help with the exact machine identification but I've never owned one. I did own one of there drive belts so check that on your machine for any lumps in it. I sure wasn't impressed with what I saw and replaced it right away. And if it was me I think I'd pull the table, feed screws and Y axis assembly apart before even running it for a good cleaning and proper adjustment. That will make a huge difference in just how tight you can get the machine adjusted while still being smooth to operate and cut the backlash to the minimum although you'll never get it all out. And if you don't already know about it then try Googling Cartesian Coordinate system.

[hammermill]

how about a picture

http://www.mscdirect.com/product/details/09512914

[Sunset Machine]

You said a 3/4 HP motor. I've a round column w/ 1 HP (had 1.5) that goes .070 deep in 1018 steel with a 3/4" two-flute. It'll talk when it's had enough. A Bridgeport-running friend was over a while back and he saw a 3/4" endmill in it. He wanted to know what it was doing in that "thing", so I showed him. He went eyebrows up and mouth open. A memorable moment. I didn't demo the shortcomings...

Good luck ID'ing it, but really it doesn't matter. Sharp tools do. Don't make dust, just go for it. You'll see the machine start jumping/chattering, back off. You might snap an endmill; it's like tapping or wrenching. You learn when enough is enough. If it squeaks, it needs to be sharpened. If you just use the end of the endmill, you can grind off the worn end on a regular bench grinder, using a gauge to keep the tips right. Put it in the quill and touch it to the table with strips of paper under each tip, then stone them true.

[Zerobeat]

Thank you to everyone that has posted in this thread. There was a lot of good information offered up, and I'm sure I'll be referring to it often. I found some measurements that seem to positively identify the mill as the RF-31, namely the quill and column diameters. In both cases, they are larger than the RF-25. Never did receive a reply from MSC, maybe I'll have to stop by the local branch for the info...

Again, thank you for the help and knowledge!

Tom