Does any one have one of these?

[robtonya]

Yes, you can put a motor on it to turn the ACME lead screw that moves
the router along the length of the turning piece.   Legacy sells one
but like everything they sell its pricey.

What you need is a little motor with a speed control and gearbox.  DC
I guess.  You can get these from surplus suppliers or maybe on ebay.

With a motor to turn the lead screw you can set it up to make a pass,
walk away and come back when the pass is finished.   If you run the
motor slowly you could take deeper cuts and complete the work in fewer
passes.

These mills are useful for making columns and stuff like that.   There is
at least one website where a guy shows how to make some motorized
jigs for the machine. 

Legacy also makes some very pricey mills for industrial use.  These models
are all motorized and will handle 8' tall columns.  Apparently they can complete
some work faster than a CNC lathe.

Also you could make little, profitable things like Pens with a Legacy Mill.

Personally I think Barley twists are generally kind of ugly and if you want
to make nice work you should think real hard about whether you are
using the mill to do something just because you can or if the design
element serves the overall piece you are building.

If you look at the Legacy Mill website you will see a lot of work that is
gimmicky design-wise, unbalanced or sometimes downright ponderous,
pretentious or plain ugly.

I'm not playing the design maven here.  Its just that when you introduce
a decorative detail you should justify its use elsewhere in the piece.
I love decorative, elaborate furniture but I have noticed that a lot of
custom work these days that takes cues fro, decorative motifs of the
past fails to capture the balance and majesty of older work.

You don't build a William and Mary highboy just by making the turned
legs accurately, you have to get the veneers right and the proportions
right too. 

Its easy to get seduced by what a tool CAN do - rather than thinking in
terms of how you can use the tools you have to make beautiful,
balanced work.

I agree with the design element, I have seen elements that were done with the mill just because they could, it didn't fit very well though.

 

[Michael Kellough]

What you need is a little motor with a speed control and gearbox.  DC
I guess.  You can get these from surplus suppliers or maybe on ebay.

With a motor to turn the lead screw you can set it up to make a pass,
walk away and come back when the pass is finished.   If you run the
motor slowly you could take deeper cuts and complete the work in fewer
passes.

These mills are useful for making columns and stuff like that.   There is
at least one website where a guy shows how to make some motorized
jigs for the machine. 

I did this to put a nice curved taper on cheap straight sided columns.

Built a "rotisserie" out of construction lumber. Used bronze bearings pressed into Doug fir

Well, I did, but for something entirely different.

This is the homemade router mill

Hopefully you can see that it is primarily composed of an old lathe (Sprunger) with the head stock separated and bolted to a wooden strongback (re-purposed from work related to the rotisserie above).

And this is it with the mill loaded with the template, stock, and router.

90VDC gearmotors and speed controllers turned the stock and advanced the router (OF 1000). I used a 1/4hp gearmotor to rotate the column but 1/10 would have been more than enough. A 1/20hp unit drove the router by turning an ordinary (but straight) threaded rod.

This is the small motor to turn the 1/2-16 threaded rod which moves the router. The motor is rated for continuous duty but got pretty warm so i added a fan.

The larger motor driving the column is hidden from view behind cardboard dust baffles. It is a 1/4hp 90VDC permanent magnet gearmotor from McMaster. You can't do anything with these things without the appropriate powersupply/speed controller (also form McMaster) but once you have the stuff you have full variable speed control and instant start/stop capability.

The motor was on the outboard end of a hinged board so it's weight and leverage provided enough tension to keep the belt engaged (similar to the way it's done on most contractor style table saw).

Luckily the columns were just under 6 feet (the length of standard threaded rod in the US, for longer lengths chain drive or wire rope would work). With more time I could have run both with the same gearmotor but it was a lot faster to be able to adjust the speed of the router's progress separately.

The threaded rod drive is so ugly because I changed gearmotors and drive trains a couple of times and when I had something that worked it was time to put it to work.

The router rode a raft comprised of the rods from the side stop and two guide rail stops. One guide stop was clamped the the wooden carriage that rode the threaded rod.

A piece of conduit determined that the router traveled in a straight line. Concave cleats kept the router engaged with the pipe. Under all that tape is a 5# ingot of lead to help stabilize the router. The conduit is covered with slippery tape to reduce drag.

The other guide stop had a nylon sheave (attached to a piece of aluminum angle) clamped to it. The sheave rode on the edge of a tempered hardboard template which determined the tilt of the router and the depth of the cut. The curve of the template. I managed to mount the template the same distance from the router bit (top dead center of the column) so the template is exactly the same curve as I wanted (and got) on the column.

The cutting was completed in one 1/2 hour pass. I set a timer and left. It was that slow to keep the pass pitch fine enough to minimize sanding. It is one veeeerrrry long spiral. I think I calculated that it was about a mile. It made a big mess and my attempts at dust collection were only sufficiant to keep the powder out of the air but the heavy stuff fell down.

 

[robtonya]

[/quote]

I did this to put a nice taper on cheap straight sided columns.

Built an 8 foot "rotisserie" out of construction lumber. Used bronze bearings pressed into Doug fir and 3/4" cold rolled steel buried into built-up plywood disks for head and tail face plates which were simply screwed into the endgrain of the columns.

90VDC gearmotors and speed controllers turned the stock and advanced the router (OF 1000). I used a 1/4hp gearmotor to rotate the column but 1/10 would have been more than enough. A 1/20hp unit drove the router by turning an ordinary (but straight) threaded rod. Luckily the columns were just under 6 feet (the length of standard threaded rod in the US). With more time I could have run both with the same gearmotor but it was a lot faster to be able to adjust the speed of the router's progress separately.

The router rode a small plywood platform that had cleats on one side that loosely captured a piece of straight pipe running parallel to the axis of the column. The opposite side of the platform was an outrigger with a wire rope sheave which rode on the edge of a tempered hardboard template which determined the tilt of the router and the depth of the cut. The curve of the template was exaggerated to compensate for how far the follower bearing (the rope sheave) was from the bit.

The cutting was completed in one 1/2 hour pass. I set a timer and left. It was that slow to keep the pass pitch fine enough to minimize sanding. It made a big mess and my attempts at dust collection were futile.

[/quote]

I would like to see that setup, do you have any pictures.

 

[Dave Rudy]

I would like to see that setup, do you have any pictures.

Michael, we gotta have pics of this, please.

 

[Michael Kellough]

I would like to see that setup, do you have any pictures.

Michael, we gotta have pics of this, please.

I thought I took some pics but if they are on the computer they don't have a searchable name, so I don't know if I will find them.

 

[Ned]

I thought I took some pics but if they are on the computer they don't have a searchable name, so I don't know if I will find them.

I'd really like to see pics, too.  Perhaps the date of the pics will help you narrow it down?

Ned

 

[Michael Kellough]

I thought I took some pics but if they are on the computer they don't have a searchable name, so I don't know if I will find them.

I'd really like to see pics, too.  Perhaps the date of the pics will help you narrow it down?

Ned

Funny you should ask, I just found them last night in the process of looking for computer back ups in general. After bragging about my 13 year old Mac in the Vista thread it slipped into a coma last night. After a couple of frantic hours of the equivalent of electroshock therapy (just short of a lobotomy) and in the process getting a report from Disk Warrior that my main drive was too screwed up for repair, and finally getting it up on crutches enough to Repair Permissions, it's all better now, like it never even hiccuped.  Go figure.

Anyway, I found some pictures and discovered that mu memory sucks, that I hag combined aspects of two different rigs in my mental picture of this thing.

The column turning rig is mainly an old Sprunger lathe with the head removed and remounted farther away on a wooden strong back so the head and tail plates are even simpler than I described. It was a real quick and dirty affair but it worked. I promise to post some pics tonight, computer willing.

 

[Michael Kellough]

I thought I took some pics but if they are on the computer they don't have a searchable name, so I don't know if I will find them.

I'd really like to see pics, too.  Perhaps the date of the pics will help you narrow it down?

Ned

Funny you should ask, I just found them.... I promise to post some pics tonight, computer willing.

Okay, I modified the original post to include pictures and corrections. You'll have to scroll up the thread to find it.

 

[Michael Kellough]

This is a bump for the benefit of all those people (okay it was only 3 people)
who wanted to see pictures, since I posted the modification rather late.

Hopefully, you can see past the mess and realize that it is really very simple
and it doesn't have to be fancy to get the job done.

Which it did, the columns turned out nice 

 

[robtonya]

Nice, It inspires me to try something like that. I would probably try this set up before I bought a Legacy Mil though.

 

[Bob Swenson]

I posted making fluted columns with the 1400 a while back on
sawmill, I was going to post it here but I also can't find the original
pictures.
take a  look at the jig I used on the creek.

Bob
http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=48083&highlight=fluting+columns