Skimming rollers out of a roller mill. I need a bigger lathe!

Video Description

In this video I had 2 rollers out of a roller mill that needed skimming. I took the job on thinking the rollers would easily fit in my lathe, however, I was wrong. After removing the bearing housing and bearings from the first roller, I discovered the rollers where actually too big to fit in my lathe. I decided I’d have ago at skimming them in the milling machine instead as I had no/limited other options. I set the lathes tailstock up on the mill and took some measurements of how high the centre was and how much higher the dividing head needed to be to match. I then cnc flame cut some plates of 40mm out and welded them together. This block then needed milling down to 77.3mm for the dividing head to sit on. With the dividing head and the tailstock to match I mounted the roller onto the mill and set to skimming it. This process turned out to be very slow and chattery because of the back lash in the dividing head. I did a few cuts then decided it wasn’t the right process for the job. I spoken to 3 people I knew but unfortunately, they couldn’t help, then I remembered my friend on a local farm had a bigger lathe and luckily, he agreed to let me use it. I loaded the rollers up into the back of the poor little corsa van and took them down. Once in the lathe it was a simple and easy job skimming them smooth again. Hope you enjoyed the video. Thanks for watching.