RE: [GrizHFMinimill] Group archives: tapered gibs
The hobbyist level mills Sieg makes don't have tapered gibs. Same goes for their lathes. Over the years there have been innumerable posts on various folks' approaches to improving the gib situation. In addition to the poor design, it often is poorly implemented -- there seems to be a lot of variation in the placement of the gib screws and "dimples" on the gibs themselves. Some have replaced the dog-point screws with pointed ones, some put in bearings, some have actually moved the locations of the screw holes. You can find just about every variation mentioned as a "fix" for a particular machine. Suggests that a particular "fix" depends on the particular machine being modded, doesn't it?
I tried an approach where I made little brass "plugs", one end of which were machined at an angle to match the dovetail. They went between the set screw and gib, inside each screw hole. The idea being that the broader contact surface would force the gib flat against the dovetail. I used the angle specified in the Fignoggle plans for their gib-making holder. My attempt did not fix the problem. For whatever reason (wrong angle? Bad machining job?) the gib still cants over and makes poor contact to the dovetail. This approach may require a very good match between the dovetail, gib and plug. 'Course, implementing something like Fromday2's tapered gib scheme would require careful machining as well.
-Mark
__._,_.___
Posted by: mark.kimball2@frontier.com
__,_._,___