Hi John,
Your problems sound exactly like mine, so I will throw an idea at you to see if it will work for you as well.

I have bought a few butterfly wrenches, air cylinders and linear rails as for my H/V mill to have 2 power draw bars but with the price of power here hitting up to 35c kw I don't want to be running my compressor for the mill all the time either.

So I am now thinking of using a 240v hand held impact gun mounted on the mill with a manual control to pull it down.

I had always planed to make the unit with a base with a slot in one side to be able to swing the power draw bar out of the way for access to the draw bar as needed.
It only needs to be held by 2 bolts, so one bolt through the base plate and the other side will have a slot so there is no need to take it out to slide the unit around, only need to undo it a little. I will be making a ring to bolt to the top of the mill, so the power draw bar base will slide easy.

So that would cover the compressor part, the draw bar only has 2 posts so you could get you spanner in, or swing it away for ease of getting at it and the same with changing it over to a longer draw bar.

There is a electric power draw bar on CNC zone, they are sold by Harbor Freight over in the US, but the only ones I can find here are 12v.



This would be a good design for a control on a tall mill, and the air gun could easily be replaced with electric


Or something simpler only with electric


Just thought I would throw this up for something to think about as it will get old real quick using the step all the time.

Whats your thoughts on a set up like this?

Dave