Harold & Susan Vordos wrote:
"ATP" wrote in message
.net...
I have my Van Norman #12 safely in my garage. I was going through the
tooling that came with it and have some basic questions concerning
the 5V collets and B&S taper adapters. From previous rec discussions
I'm under the impression that most collets are for workholding
purposes, and that end mill holders are ideal for driving end mills.
I don't see any end mill holders in my tooling set or even on ebay,
and it seems that workholding on a mill would be limited to special
operations, such as using the mill as a lathe. Are collets typically
used for end mills on these machines? I do have some B&S #7 stuff,
but it is obviously not as readily available as straight end mills.
Thanks.


Collets are a very satisfactory method of holding and driving your end
mills, and was most likely the only way the machine had been used.
While end mill adapters can be useful, they can also be a nuisance
because of the added depth necessary to accommodate them. They
are not required for manual machining, although they do serve a very
valuable service in running CNC machines, permitting consistent depth
settings where one is involved in repetitive changes of cutting tools.

Harold

That's a relief. Looks like I'm pretty well set up, then. It's a 1947
machine, apparently original paint, all the plates are clean and legible,
and everything so far works pretty smoothly.