[innova]

Howdy folks! Quite the place you have here. I am qurious what you think about this beast as a retrofit project. I tripped over one just like it and the price was right. It is in nice shape. Also being new to milling machines I am wondering what a ISA 40 spindle is. I can't find anything about it. Is it a dead duck as far as tooling goes?

[RICHARD ZASTROW]

Are you sure that's not an ISO-40? I've never seen an SHW mill. However, they were well known for their multi-angle head on a large floor type milling machine. Big like Butler Elgamill or large Zayer machines.

By the looks of it, the knee traverse r/l (X) on the platen which goes up/down (Z or Y) while the ram above goes in/out (Z or Y). If those motions have separate motors I suppose it could be converted to CNC. Otherwise it may be a bit of challenge.

Note: on closer look, it looks like the knee and vertical head swivel also. This appears to be a heavy duty true universal mill. Personally I'd keep it as is. Quite a piece.

[Al_The_Man]

It looks almost identical to the old Cincinnati point to point mills, which were hydraulic motor fed with encoder feedback, I retro fitted one of those using a PC/Galil card.
But if these are not motorized axis in a similar way, probabally one of your biggest problems/costs would be in fitting suitable backlash free ballscrews etc.
depending on what they have at present.
Al.

[RICHARD ZASTROW]

IMHO, I would no more convert that machine than I would a Monarch 10EE. If you look real close you can see the knee swivels up/down on the platen. The table swivels on the knee in/out like a conventional universal horizontal mill. The vertical head on the overarm swivels like the head on Cinci & K&T universal mills. If this is like the early Maho and Deckel universals, the round plate covers the horizontal spindle which is also a short quill or boring spindle. The vertical head can be rotated 90 deg.,and rotated end for end to become an overarm support for arbor type milling cutters. This is a milling machine department in one machine.

[innova]

Check in the attached specs. Is this a typo? I'm not sure of anything. I have a cheap imported mill/drill I retrofitted years ago. I can run it manually as easily as running a program. It has done some wonderful things for me. This SHW would just be a nice step up. It has a shaper and horiz/vert mill. The table tilts in two directions and rotates. The head both swivels and rotate. My main concern is the tooling, I would hate to get started down a path that would end for lack of tooling. Is a 40 taper a 40 taper? In other words is there the possibillity of modifying an ISO 40 shank to fit in a ISA 40 spindle. Is this just a matter of the drawbar thread arrangement? On my mill/drill I have had to do some jury-rigging to get tools mounted with good success.

Al, the lead screws are acme with 2 power driven x's and one powered z. And I would have to agree, these will present a challenge. But nothing has come easy so far... My little import still has acmes and works okay but I have done some things where ballscrews would have been nice.

[RICHARD ZASTROW]

Is it possible that ISA and ISO are the same spec.? If so, you may also be able to use NMTBA 40'S as well by having replaceable draw bars with inch & metric threads. Maybe one of our European fellows can enlighten us.