Bridgeport installation

Hey Vernon,

Your gonna do WHAT tomorrow?!?!?! I hope you're kidding about the hole in the house!! Why not just take it apart if you can't do anything more. And a Bridgeport will stand quite nicely on it's own two feet thank you very much. The only reason to put anything under it is to raise it up.

Take care.

Brian Lawson, Bothwell, Ontario.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Adjustable pads or tapped holes in the base with 3/4" bolts to allow for leveling is a good idea.

What Brian said. Why create work by altering the house?

I trust this is going to sit on a concrete pad? If not, insure that your floor joists are able to stand the load, The typical BP weighs near 2,000 pounds.

Harold

Harold and Brian. I neglected to mention one critical little detail. We are remodeling the house. And the old siding, which is rotten, deteriorated ship lap, has to come off anyway. The old walls are uninsulated. The old studs are on 16" centers. We're re-sheathing with 4x8x1/2" plywood covered by felt paper and sheathed by 4x8 hardy plank. And we're installing fiberglass insulation between new studs, newly placed on 24" centers. We've already redone the entire house except for this back wall.

So, cutting a hole in the wall and shoving the mill through the hole now makes sense. In fact, the rear bedroom window will become a 36" door when we're done. I intend to somehow bolt or screw, rather than nail, the studs and siding abutting the door, in order to facilitate getting the machine out again if our plans change or if I want to bring in something new. Or I may install double doors.

The house is on a concrete slab. And the holes in the base are indeed tapped. I only casually glanced at 'em when I affixed the thing to the trailer. But the holes look to be close to 3/4". I think I remember the scale drawing I have shows these to be 5/8". They're definitely bigger than that.

So, back to the original question, am I alright just leaving the mill on the purpose-built metal skid provided I level it and bolt it to the floor? If not I'll simply unbolt the base from the skid before I make the lift.

Thanks again!

Vernon

I would have gone with 16" centers. As for the BP why bolt it to the floor?, as others have said, it will sit quite nicely by itself. Unless you're going to abuse the hell out of it, it will not walk across the floor. Shim and level it. Oh ......forget the shims you have tapped holes for jack bolts.

My garage has a 42" door, maybe concider that or the double door idea. Although I don't ever recall seeing a double door that did not leak major air between the two. You may need to duct tape the seem to keep out the cold.

Thank You, Randy

Remove 333 from email address to reply.

Or for coolant and swarf containment.

Properly hung and weatherstripped , double doors leak no more than a single . Most people just don't take the time amd effort to do it right . A double can actually be cheaper to install than a wide single , especially if it's over the standard 6'8" tall . Solid core 2'8"/6'8" doors are cheap ... especially if you can find them at the ding and dent lumberyards . Might have to build your own custom frame , though .

Hey again Vernon,

Whewwww!! Well that's a relief!!

I have a somewhat larger version of the Bridgeport that you have, and I have seen hundreds of Bridgeports and their clones on many shop floors, and I don't ever recall even one of them being actually fastened to a floor, except where (more likely in the "old days") there was a solid conduit/pipe feeding the electrical power laid/fastened on the floor (rather than the common cab-tire rubber cable). There is not need nor reason that I can think of, other than the above, or if the floor way out of level. In fact, just the opposite is best, so that you can have a rubber pad under 4 corners to keep vibration transmittal as low as possible, and that will certainly be most true in a house. There is an advantage to ANY machine being level for a number of reasons, but even that is not a requirement within reason.

So, leave the framework you've made to transport it with if you wish, but not required, and be sure that it doesn't interfere with use or cause any sort of tripping hazard.

Good luck. Take care.

Brian Laws>>> snip------

Note that with finagling, the mill will fit through a 36" doorway without disassembly (though the base on a pallet would mess this up). It goes something like this: Back the mill up to the doorway, then crank the table all the way to one end. Now pivot the base through the doorway at an angle until you have enough room to crank the table the other way, "through" the doorway. Straighten out the base to get it the rest of the way through the door, recenter the table, and continue on your way... --Glenn Lyford

snip----

I'd remove the shipping material. You'll find reaching the drawbar a lot easier----and you'll likely to be able to level the machine far better.

Bolting machines to the floor is not acceptable today. It's not necessary, and yields no real advantage. If you level your mill properly, on pads that you can make easy enough, you'll find it is more than satisfactory. It also makes relocating the machine one hell of a lot easier. You may find that your choice of location has limitations when working on long objects. Do remember to allow for full movement of the ram. The mill should be a fair distance from the wall. Corner location is not smart due to limitations of long objects.

Leaving the mill on a skid can be troublesome in that you may not achieve full access to the base of the machine. That can complicate cleanup.

Having said all that, it's your mill, and you may have good reasons for your decisions if you choose to do otherwise.

If you elect to mount the machine on pads, get some fairly thick plates and create a counterbore, maybe 1/8" deep, that will accept the end of the leveling bolts you use. Make it slightly larger than 3/4" diameter, to accept the end of the bolt. If you can't find bolts without a grip, you can weld nuts on some 3/4" all thread, then run a nut under the head, so you can lock the setting (after leveling) by tightening the nut against the base of the machine. I have my BP set up that way. My plates are 1" thick and about 6" square. Yours can be smaller and thinner. The holes in the base of a BP are ideal for tapping to 3/4-10.

Good luck with the machine. Everything you said about the state of the house makes sense! Put it through the wall.

Harold

BEDROOM? I take it you have no plans to ever sell this house? Just knock it down when you're done? If you lube the machine properly, it will literally develop a MOAT of way oil and coolant drips around it. I have to put down kitty litter to keep it from spreading and making my feet slide out. This could be messy on a bedroom floor.

If you are tall (over 6') then the extra height might be a nicer level to work. Nut, the 4x4s sticking out will trip you, so that might not be good at all.

Consider the trip problem carefully, as you will be moving around the machine a LOT, setting up workpieces, changing tools, cleaning chips and other maintenance. I can't imagine the mess if you forget and trip over one of those while holding a 100 Lb milling vise.

Jon

rtain appeal. =A0It would

Gentlemen. The mill is in approximately it's final position. I did indeed remove it from the skid. We rolled it around the room on round bars. We were even able to scootch it sideways with but little effort and not a single smooshed finger.

To clarify some apparent confusion: We have some property on a hugely busy highway. It has a little house on it. It's barely more than a shack. But it's on a concrete foundation measuring 29' 6" square. We are remodeling the house to an as yet unspecified commercial purpose. We were thinking (and are still considering) converting it into a drive-thru ma and pa espresso bar / hamburger stand. However, we're setting up the machine shop in the back bedroom to make bracketry and such when we mount two commercial kitchen vent hoods in the living room / kitchen. Once the vent hoods are up we may decide to try to make a go at a little buy / sell / fix-it shop or something similar. I'm pretty sure the health department won't allow a machine shop in close proximity to a food service operation but I'm not certain. If I can get away with it we will keep it there. If not, we'll go for one business or the other. The house sits on 13 acres. So, even if we launch a food service operation and the health department nixes the machine shop in the back bedroom we will simply build a separate building and move the equipment.

But we do not intend to sell the house or to use it for strictly residential purposes. Thirty thousand cars pass within 70 feet of us every single day. So destiny awaits. Vernon

Excellent!

Ahh, good, not your primary residence! Makes much more sense.

He he, espresso and machine shop! However, we're

Yeah, I wouldn't want to try sleeping there with all that racket - even at night. Good luck with the project!

Jon

I have a feeling you are right - the Health Inspector has limits on metal chips and coolant in food...

Build a separate freestanding building for any restaurant or food service uses you come up with, the existing house can be the Machine Shop and construction office for now.

There are too many details that have to be right for a commercial kitchen that breezes through health inspections, and retrofitting an old house will cost much more than starting from scratch. And breaking in new inspectors that an old house has been retrofitted properly will be a fight every time. If you want it to look rustic, build new and decorate rustic.

You have to use cast iron No-Hub sanitary sewer drain pipes under the slab, since you'll be rootering out the grease and food clogs often, and steam-pressure-washing the drains to keep clogs from forming - ABS drain pipe won't last long except as the vents. You need to place lots of cleanouts in strategic locations because they will get used often.

And all the Kitchen drains have to go to a grease interceptor trap outside the building before feeding into sanitary sewers or a septic system, then the restroom sewer lines stay separate and intercept past the grease traps - and if you are on a septic system it would have to be purpose built to handle the load. A big chunk of that 13 acres out back is going to be dedicated parkland or gravel parking lot over the leach field.

The walls need to sit on extended concrete sills to avoid water infiltration, and the tile floors coved 6" up onto the wall sills, with floor drains and floor sinks in strategic spots for nightly hose downs and clean-up. Fiberglass wall panels over drywall (over plywood wherever you want to hang things on the wall) and a drop ceiling with vinyl over drywall panels.

You have to have dual potable water heaters with isolation valves, because "No Hot Water" and you are Closed till it's fixed - and the Inspector will enforce it. And a booster heater ahead of the dishwasher to hit 180F sanitizing temperatures without stopping everything for the maintenance heater in the dishwasher.

You need to bury 6" conduits under the floor for the soda fountain syrup lines, and make space in the back room for the bag-in-box racks, syrup pumps, carbonator pumps, and the Liquid CO2 Dewar...

Big electrical service, big gas service or a big Propane tank...

And those are just the high points.

You get it all done, and do wonderful business for a year or two - then they build a new interstate highway ten miles away, and all that traffic evaporates... Check that before you start.

-->--

Bruce,

Everything you say is wise and true. However, in terms of the 1 - 10 scale of bureaucratic hassle with opening a food emporium we are a 1. From a regulatory standpoint it doesn't get better than where we are. However, what remains to be seen is whether I have a tolerance level even for a 1. After we get the vent hoods installed we may just open a burglar bar shop, art metal shop, or something similar, and simply give away espresso free to our rowdy customers. I theorize that we should be able to TIG weld under those hoods without as much as a whiff of noxious fumes.

But all your points are well taken and much appreciated. I agree that a purpose built building would make sense. Thank you for your input and puleeze keep on inputting! Vernon