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Posted by David Sherman [216.18.131.34] on Tuesday, December 22, 2009 at 13:49:10 :
In Reply to: Re: Converted lineshaft drill posted by Kaegi [24.113.81.122] on Tuesday, December 22, 2009 at 12:18:46 :
We've got a similar one in the back of the mine tour, which I guess is mine at this point, since I put it there when the mining museum was wanting rid of it. The interesting thing about it is that it has 4 different modes of down-feed. It has a small pair of handles like a normal drill press that acts directly on the quill feed. It has very long handle that can be engaged in various notches in a sprocket that gives you much more leverage for a direct-acting down-feed. It has worm-gear handwheel you can turn for a very slow down-feed, and it has a power down-feed that turns that worm gear via gears and pulleys. Another interesting thing is that somebody knurled the quill sleeve at some point in the past, presumably to take up the slop that had resulted from wear. To give extra low spindle speeds, it has back gear arrangement on the main drive at the top, similar to what they had on old lathes. This was obviously a machine for drilling big holes. It's so heavy that I wonder if it was also used for simple milling operations, like cutting keyways. All you'd need is a milling-type vise bolted to the table that can move the workpiece along one axis.
It looks like it ought to work, and has an ancient electric motor on the base that was clearly added at some point. It needs the main flat belt to drive the top pulley from the motor, but everything moves smoothly and doesn't have excessive wear. If I ever can build myself a shop at ground level where I set up machine tools properly, I will try to get this thing running. I may only use it for the odd time that I need to drill really big holes, or holes in really big things (plenty of clearance to the floor!) but it would be fun to bring it back to life.
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