Bridgeport -- transportation and putting it on casters

I actually have a Dillon dynamometer scale that goes up to 2,500 lbs. I could possibly weigh it.

I am still reading everyone's comments, but I want to say that I welded on an eye for the rear tiedown to the tailgate. I already have four tiedown points on the sides, but I did not have a rear tying point.

I have five 2" wide nylon ratcheting tiedowns and will use them.

thanks.

For this trip, I will not use chains, at least not much, I will use

Well, he's been on the mover list for this auction company, for ages. I may have a wrong idea about what his credentials are. I will definitely ask for insurance etc.

Pete, thanks a lot. The ways looked nothing special. I will post more once I get it home.

I have the 5,000# version, I just don't have the headroom in the shop to get it rigged above the Bridgeport to lift it and weigh it.

Good, with something that heavy and particularly top heavy you want it well secured. Be sure to stop at the end of the driveway on your way out of wherever you're picking it up and tighten all the straps. Do it again after a few miles and you should be good from there.

Make sure the swing ring inside the mill is not cracked or broken... I almost droped my mill because the ring was broke and the top part of the mill came off when lifting with the fork-lift truck.... Putting casters on is easy by running heavy angle-iorn across the top of the holes ... Use long all threaded grade 8 3/4" bolts ... Casters get mounted on the bottom of the angle... Put the bolts up through the four holes and run nuts down on them... Slide one angle iron with two casters over onto the 3/4" bolts and run a second nut down on each bolt... This will lift the mill up onto the wheels... Now do the second set...After you move the mill you can remove the four nuts and the casters come off and you wont have anything to trip over... It only take about 10 min. to put the caster on and take them off...

I have a few questions, A few related to transportation of this mill and a few related to moving it around.

TRANSPORTATION.

SNIP

I wanted to hear some practical experiences with moving mills around, esp. from people who had them fall, to know why they fell.~

i XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Hey Iggy,

I see Marty Escarcega just popped in to RCM earlier this morning to tell us about a 15" drill press on Ebay. Drop him a line direct about moving the B'port, as he has had both good, and sadly, bad times doing exactly what you want. The sad efforts were available on the web at one time..........

Take care.

Brian Lawson, Bothwell, Ontario.

ps....... I'm about 6'2 again ( I gained an inch with the new knees) and found that I wanted to have my B'port a bit "higher" than they are made. So, I sat it on two PT 6X6", one parallel to the table at the front and similar at the back. Then I filled in the side holes that were left, not for support, but to keep anything from getting under the base that didn't belong there. I have not needed to move it since, but my plan was to just slide out the two side pieces shove in the pallet jack if I need to.

You won't find all the little problems until you start running it but you can look it over and get a good idea of how good or bad it is.

Things to check:

Automatic quill feed used for boring. Check high and low speed as well as manual.

Run spindle at the high and low settings and listen for any strange noises. If it is a J2 head vary the speed in the high and low range and listen for any strange noises. If there are noises as the speed is varied, the fiber bushings and associated parts are worn, as well as the bearings and timing belts. A days worth of work and about 300 dollars in parts and pieces to repair unless you need the main spindle bearings which, the last time I bought a set were about 250 each.

Check the scraping on the underside of the table. See how far in from the end the scraping dissapears. If you can see real good scraping at the end with no wear but nothing toward the middle you have at least .010 wear on the table and the same on the far ends of the knee side of the bearing surface.

Repairing worn ways is a cheap repair but time consuming if you rescrape the ways manually. Scraping is a pretty straight forward repair and other than a straight edge, some prussian blue, feeler gauges and misc other items it is mostly time and patience.

Look to see how far the gibs are screwed in. The further in the more wear there is on the ways. They can be repaired by an application of turcite and rescraping the mating surfaces.

The same as above for the knee and associated ways and gibs.

check the crank handle on the knee for wear on the meshing teeth.. Pain in the butt when they get worn and slip.

Check the spindle runout with a dial gauge. Feel inside the spindle collet hole for the driving tang if it is sheared off. simple repair but without it the collets will tend to spin. Also check for roughness in the collet hole where damage has been done from not cleaning out chips or inserting collets with chips on them.

Check for backlash on the worm screws. If only the nut is worn it can be adjusted since it is a split nut on most machines. While you were under the table you should look at any wear on the worm screw for wear. Look and measure the thickness of the thread at the end vs. the thickness at the middle. If you have a lathe you can recut the existing screw and tighten the split nuts, or you will have to replace the screw.

Look at the outside of the quill for wear and scoring. Check that the quill lock is working properly.

Make sure all the locks and handles are on the dovetail overarm are working properly as well as loosen the locking bolts and move the head angle left and right to make sure that the worm screws is not broken or stripped. Same thing for left and right angle of the head.

Make sure the spring loaded downfeed handle is working properly.

Check the automatic boring feed disengage is working properly... and check it in both directions... up and down.

A ' clapped out' mill is still a bargin if you can get it cheap enoughand have the time to fix it up.... cheap being under 500 dollars.

good luck

John

Iggy,

How dare you post something On Topic. What is Nick going to think ;)

Wes

Probably he thinks that my on topic posts were forged and not genuinely posted by me:)

My Bridgeport table has no flaking visible anywhere on its ways, so I don't know that it should be diagnostic, although its possible my 1980s vintage machine had been reconditioned by being reground instead of scraped. The saddle and knee ways are all flaked, though.

Eh? You speak from experience?

My experience was that it took a long, long time of backbreaking labor to scrape off multiple thousandths off a quite large area of cast iron, and it takes a lot of expensive precision levels and custom made gages to do it right.

For example, there is no way you can get the knee ways coplanar with each other using just a straight edge. It took me three custom jigs, a precision level, a height gage, among the more expensive tools, as well as gage blocks and other more common items.

Scraping just the X and Y axes involves 22 separate surfaces! All must be scraped flat to less than a thou, and level in two degrees of freedom, and coplanar in another degree of freedom, each to all the others, and so on. For reliability, you must have at least two independent methods to confirm each such alignment (for example, a level across gage blocks, confirmed by a height gage on a reference surface). A lot more than just time and patience with simple tools. The scraping itself is quite a chore, but proper alignment is a complex and frustrating process that compounds the effort enormously.

The Harbor Freight mill-drills and large lathes certainly have scraped ways.

(Not that the mass and rigidity of a mill-drill compares to a Bridgeport.)

The *only* thing that counts is an ORIGINAL WRITTEN CERTIFICATE OF INSURANCE for GENERAL LIABILITY (and perhaps vehicle liability and workers comp if applicable) from the insurance agency issued to YOUR NAME covering ALL DATES of the work and providing for WRITTEN NOTICE TO YOU if the policy is cancelled. Verbal assurances, copies of policy documents, phone calls to the agent, a photocopy of a certificate issued to someone else, etc., are all WORTHLESS and SUSPECT.

Written certificates from the agency to each customer are a normal part of hazardous businesses, so if you get any hesistation when you ask for one, be very suspicious.

Not any that I've noticed in the two HF stores in my area.

I would not recommend using a level while scraping since one little piece of scraped material under the level will get you into trouble in a hurry. A surface plate and a tenths dial indicator will do the job. Having two independant methods of measuring is nice but if you don't trust either method by itself you shouldn't be using either of them. The final check is when I machine a couple of test pieces before I deliver the equipment.

I've been doing it for 20 years on and off. I normally machine them first and then scrape them in it they are out over .010. I use power scrapers escept for final work and have all the equipment including a 5 x 10 granite surface plate to do them fast and right. I bought all the scraping stuff at the Bridgeport auction several years ago when they closed the plant.

The last couple of tenths is what takes the time. Getting everything absolutely parallel or perpendicular as the case may be is usualy not that hard if the original job was done right. If it wasn't you got to spot in some reference points and work off of them untill you get it close, then go back and remeasure and check your surfaces for parallel and on the same plane.

One thing I have notices on some tables is that they tend to bend down on each end if you measure across the top surface. Mostly seen it on older machines with a lot of parts put on and off the table. The dings and abrasion must expand the top surface and give it a bow on the top surface or someone tried to cut the top at one time with a bad set of ways. In any event you got to map out all the surfaces before you start to find where the metal must be removed to bring the thing in spec.

I have G&L hbm coming up to do that is in real bad shape. Saddle W axis is worn on one end of each way, the x axis is worn down on the spindle side way and the tailstock need some work on it too. The gibs have to be redone and a bunch of other things.

It will also need the x, y and z Quill axis to be squared up as well as the column.

John

Iggy

Where's discount machine? If it's close to you it'll be almost as close to me!

Thanks Paul

Really? They don't have that frosted look around the dovetails? It's not the fish-scale pattern for oil retention like on a Bridgeport knee.

I don't know how you can check two separated surfaces (such as the knee ways) for coplanarity and squarness without a level. A dial indicator only indicates heights, not angles.

With six degrees of freedom on the two knee ways alone (two surfaces, two tilts and one height each), you need at least six independent measurements to prove them coplanar, and you just don't get that with a dial indicator.

Specks under the level are not a problem. They are easily detected if missed in the routine cleaning. Since you are reading the level as it bridges gage blocks, anyway; the level is not flat on the ways themselves where specks would tend to interfere.

This flatly contradicts basic principles of metrology. You trust your measurements, but you check them against each other, as much to catch your own dumb errors as instrument problems.

"If you don't trust"? Error is *never* impossible, trust is never 100 percent, so you diminish likelihood of error by compounding reliable and redundant measurements.

Well, of course the proof is in the pudding, but if such a test fails, it gives you next to no diagnostic information about where the problem is, so it is not really a metrological test, it is simply a pass/fail proof of performance.

I may wholly trust my calipers and micrometer when machining a part to a tolerance, but I am sure gonna apply them both before making that final cut.

Silly question: Anyone here done it with air bearings?

You need a really flat concrete floor, but most contractors can manage that - or you have a crew come in after the fact with the Terrazzo Grinders and they can make it flat and smooth - just watched them remodel an old building for a BevMo, they ground the old slab flat and waxed it.

Put a big sheet of plate steel under the Bridgie, with a few holes at the machine feet for the leveling screws, and an air fitting in the middle. Turn on the air and it magically levitates a 32nd or two, and it's less tippy than casters or a pallet jack...

Don't raise the drawbridge, lower the river. ;-)

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I think that they are in St Charles.