New machine shop in Seattle area

You know he's refitting that old iron with new controls. Wonder what he settled on. Camsoft would be a great choice, Fagor another possibility. Mitsubishi in there too. I'm sure there are others.

When you get into this monster accurate iron, you can buy it for scrap and refit it into a state of the art machine for a fraction of new price. Of course, this is not for shops without a lot of control expertise.

Karl

Or run it with EMC2, like Stuart Stevenson with his enormous 5-axis Cincinnati mill:

?v=35tHYaDUmZQ There's a great page listing a ton of EMC retrofits:

That is HUOOGE!!!

Or you can look at my Bridgeport Interact running EMC2:

It is actually in a nice shape now, with everything tucked into the control cabinet and not looking like a crazy project.

i

By the way, not that I am contemplating, but is it really true that those huge machines can be had at scrap price, just because the big guys do not wan them, and the little guys do not have the ability to run them?

Yup, a pretty big machine. I did some servo tuning on it when I was in Wichita last spring (2009). Stuart has a couple even BIGGER machines. His Giddings & Lewis horizontal mill had a broken encoder and was not operational when I was there. We made some attempts to fix the encoder, but didn't get it working. The G&L has dual-loop control, linear encoders PLUS shaft encoders for velocity feedback. The table on the G&L is about 50 feet long.

He has a Viper gantry vertical mill that has about a 40 x 15' table that he is thinking about doing an EMC retrofit on.

Jon

Hey, Ig, after the variety of stuff you've shown us, who would have known the difference anyway? ;-D ;-D ;-D

Cheers! Rich

Maybe nobody can afford to move them.

Good Luck! Rich

We paid 750 for the twin spindle bed mill with fifty tools in the ATC and 100 for the one spindle with 20 tools in the ATC. But it cost 2K to haul home. We stripped the little guy (only 16,000 lb) sold scrap for $750 and still have the drives to sell. We're keeping all the motors pumps and components for spare parts.

Now , I may be the only guy on RCM that can use a 96" bed twin spindle bed mill. This particular mill had new ball screws installed just a few weeks before the bankruptcy sale.

Karl

Wow. I thought my Bridgeport was kind of big. Got any pictures?

That seems to be quick, from maintaining machines to bankruptcy sale.

i

Most all business bankruptcies are not planned by the business, but are forced by one or more of their creditors. Seems to take only a day at the most.

Paul

Yes, but then it takes a while to get to actual "sale". This is what surprised me.

i

here's one on eBay

It shows the operator panel I'm wrining out wires for in another thread.

Karl

Not so bad. What are your plans, refit and sell?

i

refit and give to "the kid"

Not too profitable, but very satisfying

Karl

Hmm ... what are the two analog meters for on the right hand edge of the panel?

Enjoy, DoN.

I do that too

spindle load and RPM