Fobco Star Drill Refurbishing

[mosfet171]

Hi Everyone,

This is my first time posting here. Thank you all for this great forum! I endet up here because of several threads of Fobco.
I'm actually proud new owner of a Fobco Star drill press and going to refurb this nice machine.
I'd like to share with you the progress I make and may be there are some questions I'm looking forward to your opinion.
To the project. By chance I found this machine in an old workshop. Since years it stands unused in the corner. The new owners of the workshop couldn't do anything with it because it is three phase, looks old and rusty...
Not for me. I love such old machines because they are of very good quality and precission.
By the way in a paralel project I work on a 1905 Brown and Sharpe milling machine. But thats a different story.
The pictures below are showing the machine on its original place. The plate shows the serial# 19084.
Does anyone figure out its production year according to this number?
Many thanks.

 

[slim_boy_fat]

Welcome to the forum We like to see refurbishments, so pics and a write-up as you progress, please.

 

[Rannsachair]

They are great drills.

My serial number is 45023, so quite a bit newer I guess.

 

[mosfet171]

I managed to get the machine in my workshop. The table under the drill press turned out to be an old (may be very old) machine table made out of hevy cast steel. After removing the paint I noticed that it has a nice and flat steel tabletop. I like to have a solid support for the machine, I therefore decided to refurb the table as well to use it for the Fobco.



I disasembled the machine from the table and the machine it self to clean and grind everything. It seems that it was repainted years ago with a similar turquoise colour. I assume that the colour under the on/off lables in the following picture is the original.
However, I'd like more the Fobco cream to bring a little colour touch in my workshop.



After cleaning, grinding, degreasing, the first batch of components are ready to be painted. The old colour does still have a good adhesion on the cast steel. I'll let it there to act as a filler on the rough surface and grind points where the paint has splintered to egalize the surface.



I first put on the primer coat and started to paint some parts in Fobco cream and all other in black.


Next step is to dismantle the head unit and repaint it.

 

[mosfet171]

Hi guys. Here's an actual update on my Project.

I succesfully disasembled the head unit. No problems to get the pulleys off.



Ready for grinding and painting:


As the coloum was rusty I put it on my lathe and polished the surface carefully with sandpaper grit 2000 until I got a homogenous clean surface:

 

[mosfet171]

The head is back from painting:


After cleaning the spindle, I checked the bearings. As there is no exzessive play I decided to use the old ones. In case of too much runout I still can change the bearings. However I reassembled the spindle as it was.

At the end the motor should be controlled by an frequency converter to control the spindle speed. But this means that the different spindle speeds written on the type plate are no longer valid. Therefore I'll need a speed indicator. Sorry Guys, but that's the moment where I'll do some modifications...

To implement the speed indicator, with a minimum of outer change I'll use a hall sensor inside the cast housing. This sensor detects steel or ferromagnetic material in front of the sensor tip as a logical high and the absence of as low. So the corresponding electrical signal will toggle at each slot in the pulley.
Connected to a frequency counter it will display the actual speed of the spindle. So far the theory.
To realize that I put the drill spindle pulley on my lathe and milled a small slot in (6mm in diameter and about 2mm in depth):



For the sensor I drilled a hole in the cast housing and the belt cover:


After finishing:


Tested with a Multimeter and everything worked well.

 

[mosfet171]

Last Sunday I spend a couple of hours with the fobco star plate and the depth gauge. The plate was initially in this condition:


I cleaned all with the wire brush, painted in black and scratched the paint away from the higher portions of the plate:

As final step I covered all with a transparent varnish:

Not perfect, but muuucchh better than before. I'm happy!

Here are the pictures of the depth gauge. Much thanks to dieselkid 63 for sharing this method!:


​

 

[fizzy]

Doing a great job.
Interesting old lathe you have there - never heard of it before.

http://www.lathes.co.uk/mondiale/page2.html