Show me your Mini Mill setup

[Chris79]

I think this is the best place to post my questions here. I just got a Mini Mill for my birthday/Christmas! Woot.

I'm just getting my head around some of the practicalities in terms of people's setup/config of their mill/drill.

My question here is for those that use something like the Ozito spade drill, and have it upside down on a timber etc surface: do you have to turn the mill upside down? Is that just simply turning the mill upside down or some pulling apart of the mill is some way (was a bit unclear what ppl were saying on the bulk buy thread with the mill when using the drill upside down)? If you run it that way, are you running the mill in forward or reverse mode?

Or others who simply run it like Rocker above running it the right way up, I guess that's running it simply in forward mode?

Cheers

 

[peteru]

It's not complicated.

• You want to run the Ozito spade handle drill in forward mode. Running a drill forwards means that it will be turning clockwise, therefore you want to connect the drill and mill such that the drill turns clockwise.
• You can do that either by:
  1. Connecting the drill to the keyed end of the shaft.
     No other modifications are needed.
     
  2. Turning the mill upside down and connecting the drill to the triangular end of the shaft.
     If you do this, you will also need to pay attention to the gear guard inside the mill. It is attached using two smaller screws on the side. Remove these screws, move the gear guard from the bottom of the mill to the top, then reattach using the same screws.

 

[Chris79]

ok, thanks @peteru . Just want to be clear on the basics first.

 

[mkj]

Here's my basic setup for hand crushing, 8kg hopper. I thought the nylon compression fitting for the old Marga crank was a clever idea, until I tried some hard carahell and the copper pipe just kept slipping. I'll have to find a better crank or attachment there.

 

[mkj]

So it turns out a drill chuck+marga handle works way better than a plumbing compression fitting!
Used a dremel to cut some edges for the keyed parts of the marga handle. Goes through that 8kg pretty fast, 6 minutes?

 

[STIK79]

Finally got around to buying a mill (what a fine piece of engineering this thing is!) and knocked up some 3d printed mounts to attach it and ozito drill to a small table.

(Please ignore the printing zits on the side mount - I was tuning print settings... badly)

Anyway - have uploaded the mounts to thingiverse if anyone wants them.

 

[wide eyed and legless]

You can't beat a nice neat job. Well done.

 

[Abird89]

Those mounts look great. How much in materials would that actually set someone with a 3D printer back?

 

[STIK79]

Those mounts look great. How much in materials would that actually set someone with a 3D printer back?

The whole set uses about 90g of filament. PETG is roughly $36/kg so roughly $3.25 in materials (mind you that takes about 12 hours print time with PETG) - PLA is a bit cheaper $23/kg so $2 in material and prints faster - but has a lower glass transition temp so might get a bit melty if left in a hot shed (starts to melt at 60oC)

 

[Crakkers]

Those mounts look brilliant!
I've been looking for an excuse to buy a 3D printer for a while now.....think I just found one.
In the meantime, my handle-mounted Ozito is still doing a good job.