mill power table feed

 Ugh.

 After decades of owning a mill with a non-functional power table feed, I have finally embarked on the adventure that getting it working again will entail.

 First piece, because it looked easier, has been the motor drive.  I'm dumping the old, dead 1970s tech in favor of a modern drive with the same capabilities, which is half the size and generates one quarter of the heat as the old one.

 The new motor drive requires two industrial control relays, which I thought I had ordered, but Mouser canceled my order while still showing stock. Their customer service rep seemed clueless and unhelpful.  Mouser is kicked out of the clubhouse.  So are Grainger and Newark as their over-enthusiastic security plugin for the web server is falsing on my browser's plugins and won't let me give them money.  Are they hiding some vulnerability?  Better not risk it!

 There are many other competing suppliers.  Even eBay.

So that rankles because even if I wire it all together including the relay sockets, it's no good without the relays.

 There is other work to be done on this box; the pilot lamp and power switch needed replacement, I had the switch on hand, but not a good lamp.  Those are cheap, I'll get one ordered soon. The box itself needs to get sandblasted (done), acid-etch primed (primer not arrived yet), top coated, then the raised letter parts carefully hand-sanded.

 After that box is done comes the more arduous table feed itself.  This consists of a motor, a gearbox, and an electrical box with switches inside and a pushbutton (for fast-traverse) and a speed control knob.

 The shaft that actuates the switches passes through the oil-filled gearbox.  The oil-filled gearbox which is located on top of the electrical box.  And they did not have Viton O-rings back then, so guess what always happens eventually?  It was a screwball, in-house, ad hoc design.  A good cleaning and replacing the failed o-rings with modern Viton (fluoroelastomer) rings should solve the problem for a lifetime or three.

 And of course, the wire ends need to be trimmed back and replaced, and the electrical components, which are full of oil.

 And I don't think I'll be able to resist sandblasting and coating the power feed assy either.

 I think I have posted a few pictures of this stuff already.  If not, I'll post some.

 ~≈{👁}≈~