Bridgeport dimension

What's the height from the floor to the top of the ram on a Bridgeport J / 2J vertical mill?

Reason I'm asking is to try and determine if a Harbor Freight shop crane (2 ton) has enough height / reach to slide under the end of a trailer and lift it up off of the trailer. The other alternative is to slide it down a ramp of some sort with a comealong winching it down. I'm not thrilled about sliding a top heavy item with a narrow base down a ramp.

RWL

Reply to
GeoLane at PTD dot NET
Loading thread data ...

download the manual from my site

formatting link

Absolutely NOT. Not by far. I own both a bridgy and the crane. The crane is indispensable, but cannot even approach a Bridgy.

You can make it a lot less top heavy, and bolt to a makeshift pallet.

Reply to
Ignoramus26581

Thanks, but not in the manual I need. The round ram one has the dimension to the middle of the round ram as 54", but the manual for the J head model doesn't have a dimension for the ram height at all. I did some crude measurements on the J head drawing and assuming that things are to scale it should be around 59-60", but I don't know if that's close enough. I'm going down to Harbor Freight tomorrow AM, hopefully to buy the 2T shop crane. I need to add BP ram height to trailer deck height to see if the crane's boom can lift it. Can one of you guys measure your Bridgie and post it?

RWL

Reply to
GeoLane at PTD dot NET

I used a generic 2-ton import engine hoist to lift a Bridgeport off of a flatbed trailer. It worked fine with the legs all the way extended and every bolt tightened. Just don't try to roll the hoist around with the mill in the air - the caster pins will just crumple. I made a dolly with a lot of clearance underneath to roll over the engine hoist legs.

Pick up mill. Move trailer out from underneath it. Roll dolly under mill. Let down on dolly. Roll mill to where you need it. Reposition engine hoist. Lift mill slightly. Remove dolly. Set mill down gently between hoist legs (make sure ahead of time it will fit!). Remove engine hoist & dolly, skid mill slightly to get it into final position.

Grant

** Posted from
formatting link
**
Reply to
Grant Erwin

I highly recommend using the hoist to remove the head/ram assembly from the base and moving them separately. This is a simple matter of removing the four bolts that attach it to the base. When moving a Bridgeport with something like an engine hoist this makes the process a lot easier and safer by significantly lowering the CG as well as the total weight lifted at one time.

Reply to
Pete C.

It would be easy and safe until the head/ram assembly tips over on you. The mill's CG is pretty much under the 5/8-11 hole on top of the ram, but if you lift the ram/head by that lifting hole, there's no guarantee that it will be balanced at all. So do it dang carefully.

Plus, that leaves you with no good way to lift the mill. The lifting eye is gone, as are the front/back of the ram. The former is the way to lift with a single point, the latter are the way to pick up the mill using a sling to a single hook or using a forklift. With the top off the mill, all bets are off. Maybe you could bolt some chain to the body, using the

4 holes on top where the ram connected.

Have you ever done this, Pete?

Grant

** Posted from
formatting link
**
Reply to
Grant Erwin

I put up a couple pages from a manual here.

formatting link
Some dimensions are on it and you can scale the rest.

I'd consider removing the head from the machine and stowing it in your truck. Then take off the ram, turret, and adaptor off, a good 350#+ off and lashing that down, then put the headless base on your trailer.

formatting link

It is pretty stable then.

HTH,

Wes

Reply to
Wes

60 inches from floor to top of ram (that is, where the 5/8-11 lifting eye goes). This is the J head model, aka 1J, not the newer 2J or older M head.

Suggest you get some 10 ft sections of SuperStrut from Home Depot, and C- clamp them across the hoist legs, as outriggers to provide some backup stability. Just might save your bacon if she decides to tip. Your sturdy, rigid little hoist will start to feel like it's made of springy fishing rods once you load it up with 2000 lbs of Bridgeport.

Reply to
Richard J Kinch

Thanks. Iggy had that diagram too. That's the one I used to do the calculation that it should be about 59-60". Sadly, the measurement itself isn't on the diagram and an inch or two may be critical depending on the height of the trailer.

I've found a couple sites with photos of how you guys have moved your BPs. If I can lift the entire mill without removing the head, that would be easiest. Probably going to have to roll it on pipes on planks over the level grass to the back door of the cellar. Yeah, when I built my house 22 years ago I made sure I had a walk in door after having to pull a Clausing lathe and my Hardinge UM mill up steps. Shoulda had a wider door put in to eliminate the need for possibly having to remove the BP's table, but money was tighter then.

Thanks to all of you for your suggestions / help so far and thanks Richard for measuring yours. Off now to Harbor Freight in Harrisburg. There's one that will be closer to me in Williamsport starting Nov 1st. My first trip to a HF store today.

RWL in beautiful central PA (on a rainy Saturday AM )

Reply to
GeoLane at PTD dot NET

Several times before I got a forklift. The lift point for the base is a piece of unistrut attached across the two front holes on the base where the ram attaches.

Reply to
Pete C.

Is there another name for SuperStrut. I looked also for Unistrut at the home depot web site but couldn't find any listing for it. Any place besides Home Depot to look for this sort of steel?

Outriggers might have made things do-able if I'd had them last Thursday when I brought the Bridgie home. The crane was sitting on level dirt, but it was uneven enough that it tilted slighly to one side when we were picking up the BP, so in the end I had to get the neighbor to bring over his Bobcat and lift it off for me.

Lots of little things need to be fixed on this machine, so I'll be posting a bunch of questions.

Hoping to get the TECO VFD set up on Tuesday.

RWL

Reply to
GeoLane at PTD dot NET

Both of you guys are the voice of experience, but I wanted to confirm that what Pete said about removing the head, ram & turret to lighten the load works OK. We were flailing trying to figure out how to get the mill off the U-Haul trailer with a semi-stable HF shop crane. Removing those components made it lighter and we hoped to be able to have enough stability to lift the remainder. I left the yoke inside the casting and attached two short pieces of unistrut I'd saved years ago. I put two 2x4's under the unistrut (perpendicular) as the place to lift because I was afraid of breaking the yoke casting inside the BP column. It would have been easier if I'd remembered that you could lift from the front unistrut section alone. The mill did indeed want to tip forward toward the Bobcat offloading it, so we put a second sling under the knee to hold it level.

The move would have been very entertaining for those of you with experience and better equipment. I couldn't find a 5/8-11 eyebolt locally, and as an afterthought called a guy in the maintenance dept at work to see where I might find one. He said he had several and would send one over on the day of the move with my supervisor, who was helping me move the mill. When he got home, he realized that all of his eyebolts were 3/4-something. He welded a 5/8-11 stem onto the side and sent it to me. The weld looked pretty good, but I wondered if Frank was a good welder. We put it in use and it held. Think I'll buy one for the next move though.

Going to pick up a 6x12 Boyer Schultz surface grinder in the Philly area tomorrow. The info on the web says it should weigh 800 lbs, but the guy who's selling it says he can walk it around the factory floor on his own and doesn't think it weighs that much. We'll see. I'm still mulling over a way to make outriggers for the HF shop crane to get it off my pickup tomorrow.

RWL

Reply to
GeoLane at PTD dot NET

Electrical supply house. Most sell to the public.

Wes

Reply to
Wes

Don't waste your time at the Home Depot web site. It's in the electrical aisle at the stores....

Reply to
Rick

formatting link

Reply to
Richard J Kinch

On Sun, 19 Oct 2008 21:16:18 -0400, the infamous GeoLane at PTD dot NET scrawled the following:

I bought some 1-5/8" square Unistrut at HD last year, when I bought my truck. I cut it and used it in place of the $165 (through Toyota) bed rail system. Cost: $20 for a 10' stick, $20 more for some t-nuts, bolts, & pipe clamps. The low-profile stuff (1-5/8" x 13/16", no holes) was $15/stick.

They don't show it online, but it's in the electrical section. Sparkies use it for hanging conduit. (Right, Bruce?)

If you can't find it at your local HD, call some of the electrical supply houses (Platt Electric Supply up here in PNW) for it. It'll be $35-44 a stick, but you'll find it. What a crock!

Cheaper source, plus (outrageous?) shipping fees

Hey, nice neighbors!

-- "Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy." -- Ernest Benn

Reply to
Larry Jaques

The local hardware store (True Value?) here sells similar 1/2", 2100 Lb eye bolts for a buck or two more, with no shipping charge of course.

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

I measured the two short pieces I have in the shop. They're 1-5/8. Pretty strong stuff, but I was wondering if they had larger sizes. What I was thinking of doing was putting it inside the legs of the shop crane, extended out maybe 6" and then with a screw type foot that could be used to level the crane on soft or uneven surfaces.

Yeah. He is a nice guy. I paid his son in law to move some trees for me with the Bobcat last spring. I offered to pay him when he lifted the Bridgeport off the trailer but he declined. I think he was just amused at what I was hauling into my cellar.

Thanks to all of you who answered my question.

RWL

Reply to
GeoLane at PTD dot NET

Gotta have 5/8-11. All the local stores I visited had only up to

1/2". I heard indirectly that there's a place that has larger sizes locally, so I'll have to find that place.

RWL

Reply to
GeoLane at PTD dot NET

I bought mine at McMaster-Carr.

Reply to
Ignoramus28797

PolyTech Forum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.