Design of Mill Base Stand

[Kevin Morin]

This thread is more about the design of a little mill's stand than about the construction.

A close friend was given a small mill, used more as a drill press in his work than a mill but its on a wooden base/stand. I was helping to move a few items around at his shop when I saw a pile of short off-cuts of 6" rect. steel. It was not new material and had plenty of surface rust but since the wall was close to 1/4" and the outside corners were rounded, I thought this material would make a nice looking stand for his small mill?



I used a HyperTherm 52 (Radnor consumables from Liq Air) to rip the top frame's "rounded angle" and mitered these four pieces into a frame 3" deep. Then I ripped the legs to a taper by cutting from a 4" wide top to a 2" wide base- four sides on a 26" long piece.



I planned the mill base to fit inside the curved top radius where the frame is flat, thought the tapered legs looked good compared to uniform (angle) legs that were vertical. I also kicked the four legs out by taking a 1/2" back cut on the top ends- this gave a wide stance to the base in both directions. The design looked better to my eye, with both the taper and the spread at the base?



Here's a remainder of the 6" rect. tube stock- its shows the ERW inside and I didn't bother to dress that entirely on the top frame or legs as they'll be inside out of view. A piece 26" long was cut off this 34" piece and then taper ripped on the four faces to get the legs. The top came out of a rem that was 25-3/4" long and little was off-cut as the four top pieces are 25-3/4" x 3" x 3" and 17-5/8" respectively. This ends in a top frame with a very small set back from the mill's base- but leaves a visible rounded/radiused outer frame edge.

I did sand out some of the rust pitting, but didn't blast or dress to a fine finish due the tools at hand. After the plaz edges were dressed a bit for burrs (even with a guide I'm not very smooth!!) and then beveled at the corners both for the top frame and the legs' weld allowances.



The same piece of 6" x 6" x 1/4" (approx. thickness) stock shown in relation to the top frame rips made in this orientation.



When the legs are leveled (angles sanded to flatten the kick out angles) then a base plate will be installed and I'll put these leveling feet into each leg bottom pad to allow the stand to adjust to the floor at the location in the shop. If anyone is not familiar with Carr Lane and their great products- they are worth a visit and close inspection of their catalog of parts/components.

The idea in my project was to take some existing material and whittle it to create a stand that was a little more pleasing to the eye. I've tacked and root V passed the 8 corner welds with 6010 using a little Lincoln portable at the shop (model?). I filled the V's with 7018 and then ground the outside welds' crowns with a hard wheel and finished with a flap sander moving from 40 up to 80 grit and then I'm using rattle can primer. I'll top coat when I get the rest welded and final sanded.

Main reason for posting is the design by using rectangular steel to obtain the main design element of large radius rounded edges- not having to press break 1/4"-5/16" which would make the cost too much to accept- where a few hours and a few sticks of rod make the project affordable since the material was at hand.

If I bought material- so it wasn't scarred up, and rusty and pitted, I'd have gone to the trouble to put a steel track saw on the cuts to get a very fine edge but used the plaz as it was handy. If I was going to finish it to powder coat, I'd have purchased new steel to reduce the surface irregularities and then blasted it before coating. As it is, rattle can primer and top coat will probably be the level of finish.

Food for design thought in regard benches, machine carts, equipment stands, shelving base units, and other places where some whittled rectangular tube might add some design refinement for the investment of just a few hours extra labor? Our local metal supplier ends up each year with shorts of this nature from column cuts they sell. Once the off-cut is shorter than so many diameters of its cross section (longest here was less than 6X the cross section) the material become "rem" priced. So in our location buying material of this short length but fairly heavy section is very economical compared to buying from a full length and having it cut down to shorter lengths. The same design principles used here could be applied to any size square tube.

Cheers,
Kevin Morin
Kenai, AK

[Don52]

Your design is pleasing to the eye as well as functional.

Don

[Kevin Morin]

got the stand done and some rattle can paint on



Tapered legs look good IMO, and give the base a wider stance to carry the heavier piece on a light frame.



Slid the mill off the wooden table/base on to the stand on some cardboard using drill bits as rollers and roughly lined up for drilling to the base.





The base makes that corner of the shop a little easier to clean- so it looks like room for some supply storage boxes or cabinets and the very much needed work lites.

Anyway, whittling rectangular tube can make a decent base frame with tapered legs that kick out and increase the base foot print for equipment stability. If the rectangular stock is purchased as off cuts- the cost can be very low but remain an attractive addition to your shop.

cheers,
Kevin Morin
Kenai, AK

[forhire]

The design is nice. Good use of the materials on hand. I'm filing this idea away for future use.

[umahunter]

Nice job !!!

[OPUS FERRO]

Kevin Morin

. . . a hog on ice . . .


Opus

[jpump5]

Have you considered adding a shelf to make stand more rigid?

[farmersamm]

I have a small knee mill that sits on the cabinet that came with it. My main concern when installing it in the "shop" was stability. It's pretty top heavy.

I wound up welding a plate to the bottom of the cabinet, and screwing it down to the wood floor.

What I've found most surprising, is the amount of vibration generated by the machine. It will resonate inside the shipping container. The wood floor is flexible enough to allow for vibration to amplify. You'd think an 800# machine would be more stable, but it isn't. I suppose it's the reason the full size Bridgeports are so heavy. Mass soaks up vibration, as well as providing more rigidity I guess.

[ManoKai]

@ Kevin Morin - really nice table. The mid-century modern look is sweet.

[oldandslow]

Nice work-----but-----I see problems with keeping your machine level.

[cloudman]

great example of recycling - nicely illustrated post. I'm filling this idea away too. Thanks

[docwelder]

too late for this thread but the lincoln book on welding procedures has a chapter on machine base design. it's got excellent examples showing transitions of differing structural shapes.

[Kevin Morin]

thanks for the kind words, much better than the other kind of words we sometimes share with one another! (deserved or not?)

As ManoKai notes I was headed for a 'look' maybe a period look in the design. 100% of my choices revolved around the rectangular tube steel; #1 on hand and free & #2 its outside corner shape. So all the effort was to get that round-over look on the stand's intersections of planes of metal. I guess we could say this was the Sears Craftsman 1957 base look?

IF we (WWEB.com) had a design thread I'd have posted there; as the build was not all that well finished in either process or level of effort.

oldandslow (a handle I can identify with) the legs' leveling feet were shown in the first post (Carr Lane leveling fittings) and they worked OK. I only used a pipe/torpedo level on the cross table top to decide if the tool was level? I did bolt the four corners of the tool's cast base to the stand which was not distorted by adding the tool on top. The legs/feet allowed for a small partial turn of one corner's leveling threads to tilt the tool up a bit in front. So while I'm sure a higher repeatability tool may require more refinement in a base leveling provision- this tool's cross table came into level with the feet used for that purpose.

NOTE: if a larger machine were mounted then the these legs could be double sided- a pair of these tapers could be welded to themselves, and the welds dressed to create hollow tapered, splayed legs of incredible bearing strength, as columns. So a full rectangular upper frame with tapered hollow legs of which this design would be only "half a leg" will result in a very similar look but possess a load capacity in a different magnitude.

The feet shown have a ball and socket joint from the thread stud to the conic foot pad. So even if the legs were not evenly splayed by the wt. of the tool? The angle is corrected in the ball joint nearest the floor.

jpump5, yes i did consider a shelf and for that exact purpose. Initially i figured the frame would flex torsionally due the leg and floor leveling and I thought I'd need to keep the legs from 'kicking out'? Until I welded the stand out, inside and out, and stood it up for the final time. Then I found is was pretty stiff due to the 4"x4" 'angle' corner braces with a 26" leg underneath. There was very little movement in the frame so I skipped the shelf. (this shop collects 'stuff' on every horizontal surface including the floor!!!) So... I'm drawing a small cabinet to roll under the stand (trapezoid in elevation) that would roll under and between the legs- this would give storage but not touch the frame.

With the tool loaded on and roughly leveled there's no movement of the frame to counter- with a shelf. Now if I were hogging away with some wide diameter cutter taking big, deep passes, maybe this stand would just 'jitterbug' its way out of the shop?? Don't know? But as its 98% drill press, this "quickie" stand is workable.

Thanks again for the kind words, I posted to discuss design more than build- I'll look up the Lincoln book that includes machine base designs- thanks' docwelder.

Cheers,
Kevin Morin
Kenai, AK

[welditforyou]

Kevin Morin

. . . a hog on ice . . .


Opus

Opus . . . Why do you always have a s#!tty crack for someone.

[welditforyou]

Say Kevin,
I have the same type mill but haven't built the stand for it yet.
I am going with a square tube cabinet the same size as the grizzly cabinet for these.
There is nothing wrong with yours, I might put a shelf under it because I always need a place to put stuff like the clamping set.
Your setup looks good brother!


Jim