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Anayak "Exacto" Vertical Mill Rebuild, Part 19:



Although the major mechanicals were now (mostly, hopefully) sorted, there are still plenty of little details to
attend. First and foremost, to make the machine daily-usable, we needed to get the wiring up to spec,
and add some workable controls. I'll be using a VFD, so that will need to be installed and wired, and
a stop/start/reverse switch mounted. Our first order of business, however, is the junction box at the
motor. At some point a previous owner had removed the cover and attempted to disconnect
the wires there, then apparently just decided to chop the cable off.
The cover of the box, however, was lost to history.



I'd considered welding up an all-new box out of aluminum, using an off-the-shelf electrical box from
the Big Box store, or trying to find a suitable readymade box I could adapt. After some pondering,
however, I decided, hey, I'm a machinist, I'll just mill a new cover. :)

So I bandsawed off a nice chunk of 1" aluminum bar stock.



And after a bit more thought, scribed the mating angle off the original base,
and set it up in the mill like so.



Shaved flat, the new bar will reform the box into a proper rectangular box. Why not just make a flat plate?
Because the box base would have been too thin, without enough room for the wires and wire nuts.



Mill off a bit more material...



And the new block seats nicely onto the base box.



Flipped over, we scribe a few marks, take a few measurements, and hog out the bulk,
leaving the large face a bit over 0.100" thick.



The high end being pretty well located by the angled "keys", I was then able to
round the corners to match the base, with a small belt sander and hand files.



The low end I thin milled away the bulk, leaving a small boss for the third cover screw.



A quick pass with a 1/8" radius corner-rounding tool adds a bit of flair to the job.



The corners and the screw boss get cleaned up and smoothed down with hand files.
But we're not done yet!






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