Moving a knee mill into basement

I put some pictures in the dropbox that outline the process I used to move a Supermax YCM-40 CNC knee mill into my basement. This is a beefier version of a Bridgeport with bigger base, saddle, knee, and box ways. The head is also solidly attached to the ram so it went down as one piece. A Brideport would have been easier since you can handle the head and ram seperately. Total machine weight with control is approx 3000lbs. The base being the biggest is probably close to 1000 lbs. I don't have a walkout basement so it all went through my front door and down a flight of stairs. This basically answers the age old question of "can I move a Bridgeport into my basement". The response should be how bad do you want one down there? The move went very smoothly and without issue.

Mill_to_Basement

Fifteen pictures posted of Mill to Basement. Pictures 11 through 15 kind of got lost a tad bit down the list.

It looks like maneuvering the gantry through the house without putting it through a wall was the most difficult part of the move. The first few pics look more like a "how to build a really overkill battering ram" tutorial.

Pete C.

gradstdnt wrote:

I gotta admire your SO. She must be very understanding. Perhaps you did it while she was out. Mine would not sit still for such a process through the front hall. OTOH, she helped me get the Drill Mill into the basement and set up, so she's not all that obstructive.

-- Bob (Chief Pilot, White Knuckle Airways)

I don't have to like Bush and Cheney (Or Kerry, for that matter) to love America

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Interesting project...

Wanna fly over to Denmark and help move something similar to a 4th floor appartment w. no elevator? :-)

One comment tho:

are lifting this with ratchet straps.. This is NOT a good idea.. Ratchet straps are designed to tie a load down ( on a flatbed truck for example )... The solution is to use the ratchet straps to strap the mill to the skids and use real slings ( or chain ) to do the lift..

Good luck w. the mill

/peter

The straps doing the lift look like the 2" ratchet straps which have something like a 10,000# rating so they are probably ok, and they aren't lifting it very high. Of course a "real" 10' double eye lifting sling costs about the same as those straps and would probably be better.

Pete C.

Q wrote:

Thanks for the pictures! You're living proof that we're limited mainly by our preconceptions and fears.

If it were me, I'd have hired a c> I put some pictures in the dropbox that outline the process I used to > move

I figured someone would notice that I cheated a bit. Yes, there is a ratchet strap lifting a portion of the load. I do realize these are designed to tie down, not up. The straps are indeed10,000 lb rated and more than capable. The little strap you see is only holding the skid on. I did ensure my setup was capable beforehand in the garage by actually lifting the assembly with the knee and saddle in place. The final move was lighter minuse those items. The biggest lift was from the sidewalk to the porch. The rest of the trip any failure would have meant a drop of about an inch. If I had to do it again, I would definitely make use of rated lifting straps just for piece of mind. The heavy ratchet straps did allow fine tuning of strap legths to get the load properly balanced.

When I read your post I said to myself, self, this should be interesting. But viewing the photos shows that you took it apart.

Well, that takes all the fun out of the project. Just kidding of course. Very well done!

Down the road from us they are building a cluster of new homes. We looked at one, just for curiosity, and found that for $349,000 you don't even get a cellar bulkhead. Good God in heaven above!

$349,000 for that house. P.T. Barnum was right. There IS a sucker born every minute.

Errol Groff

Errol Groff

Instructor, Machine Tool Department H.H. Ellis Regional Technical School Danielson, CT 06239

860 774 8511 x1811

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That's why you really want to put the image numbers near the tail end of the filename (just before the file type extension is a good place). That will assure that they get sorted together in normal filename sorting.

It is good that you added a leading zero to the single-digit file names, so they sort in proper order.

Quite a project. I hope that you enjoy the machine once you get it back together.

BTW -- can you get that gantry crane downstairs to help you reassemble it? Or something that will do the job?

Good Luck, DoN.

Not clear why there is this "dropbox" thing at all, like it was a BBS in

1980. Some reason these files on the Web can't be Web pages?

If folks don't want to or can't host their own photos and/or write pages for them, there's the Dropbox.

GTO(John)

It looks like you used "anchored" the gantry against the doorway at the top of tyhe stairs. Did you notice any movement or give of the doorway while lowering the heavier components? Did you use (or consider) 4x4's or similar to support the stairway?

Pretty impressive move! My wife and I moved a 300-500 lb grinder base down a stairway a few months ago with a bit different approach and that seemed to me to be the practical limit - until now.

The doorway provided a very solid backup structure for the gantry with no deflection, creaks, groans, or cracks in the drywall. It is just the horizontal component of the load that is being acted here, not the full load. I did wedge two 4x4's under the stairs mid span to ensure rubustness and piece of mind.

Some have mentioned my wifes toleration of my hobby. She didn't have to lift a finger and no damage or abuse was done to the home. The bigger challenge was maintaining my position that the basement is my shop space and not misc/junk storage. This was actually my second big move. If you look at 2003 archived files under Lathe Move, you will see how I moved the bed of a 13 x 40 Clausing Colchester lathe. The base for the mill is bigger but in general the process is old hat now.

moving some stuff into the basement.

The crane does fit into the basement. Main beam goes through window opening and the rest down the stairs by hand. I designed it to clear all beams and ductwork in it's lowest height. It will enable me to move and assemble everything by myself. The move took about three hours including some prep like removing basement door and handrail and putting down the hardboard to protect the floor.

We started around 4:00 PM and it gets dark pretty quick around 5:00 PM. Total move was around 3 hours. The slowest part was lowering the items down the stairs with the lever hoist. Very slow and tiring on the arm even though there isn't much effort. The three of us worked shifts on the hoist. Power hoist would have made the whole move much quicker and almost effort free

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Although the lift wasnt that big you may want to imagine the pain of parking that load on your toe:-)

Or even worse... The pain of getting slammed in the face with a fryingpan by an angry wife after the base of the mill tore a hole in the basement wall because the ratchet strap let go while you were lowering the base down the flight of stairs..

I work with stage rigging on the side and was taught never to use ratchet straps for anything but tying speakerstacks down on the stage or in the truck... Real slings or chain is the only solution..

/peter

Obviously. The question is, why the clumsy FTP-style interface, why are they not arranged into single HTML pages by topic. You have to click at least 2N times to look at N photos for just 1 topic. XYZ.txt and XYZ_1.jpg thru XYZ_N.jpg should all be viewable in one XYZ.html.

Actually -- it is updated regularly. Steve donates the file space and the server, and regularly (about twice a year) moves older files into separate archives by year, to keep the current directory from getting too large for practical browsing.

As for the arrangement -- it is an automated process, with the files extracted from the e-mails submitting them without any hands-on work.

It is up to those who donate the files to name them in such a way that they group together in an alphabetical sort. You saw one of the problems -- if you start with image numbers, things get spread out rather strangely. Standard practice is to have all of the related files start with the same string, and the numbers as the last things before the file type extension.

Steve has other things to do, which bring him income. This does not. As it is, he spends far too much time checking for virii in recent uploads -- and weeding out spam.

Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Instead, be thankful that Steve does make this available.

If you want a neater organization, offer your own web space and method of submission. This one works well for most here. And you can't beat the price. :-)

Enjoy, DoN.

How I do it is look at the text file and see the file names. Then modify the file name in the viewer and bam the picture - then modify for the next.

If I want said set, I do a RMB - that is Right Mouse Button - and do a save as to file name.

This could be overly controlled java driven but the site is provided at no cost and is just fine for most of us.

Martin