New Addition for the Shop :)

Since getting the mill I have been trolling the local Craigslist entries in search of a reasonably sized lathe.  This weekend, I found a used Clausing 6303 12x24 inch machine up in Temecula (~30 minutes north of here). Supposedly this machine had been sitting in a garage for 30 years.

Here it is on the trailer in front of the garage:

 Hmm, That angle looks kind of familiar ,....


Here is a closeup of the headstock showing some of the Grime that still needs to come off:

Mill Vise Fixture Plate

I was inspired by this article on Tom Liptons OxTool blog to make a clamping plate for my mill vise. As Tom points out, this is a great way to hold on to those odd parts that won't really work in the vise but would be easy to hold in the T-Slots, if you just didn't need to take off that darn vise...

Fixture shown clamping a thin part
 

Fixture used as an Angle Plate

Idea for controlling flying chips

I was getting annoyed at having chips flying in my face and across the garage. After a few moments of thinking, I came up with the following setup:

Panels Set up near vise

The front Shield consists of a wood base with a slot for a piece of lexan milled into it. Both the front and the side pieces are attached to the mill table using magnets from old Hard drives. These magnets are used to move the head in and out and are made from high-energy rare earth magnets. This means, that they REALLY stick well. :)

Hdd Magnet mounted to base of front window

HDD Magnet and mounting block for side panel

In use, the front shield keeps chips off of the operator (me) while still allowing me to see the cut. The side walls keep the chips near the machine instead of having them fly all the way across the garage.

Brigeport Mill for the Garage - Part 5 - New DRO scale and alignment

The old Sargon DRO scale was not salvagable, so I ordered a replacement from ...

 Here is the replacement X-Scale installed on the back of the table. I had to drill and tap new mounting holes, since the holes are nowhere near the old Sargon ones. The old scale was not salvagable, so I bought a replacement, which also increased the X resolution from 10 microns to 5.


The image below shows the debris shield installed over the scale

 

Brigeport Mill for the Garage - Part 4 Electrical system installed and cleanup

The electrical system has now been installed and tested on the motor

Control box and Sub-Panel

Interior of control box

Brigeport Mill for the Garage - Part 3 Electrical system

One of the challenges of bringing home Industrial Equipment is the lack of three-phase service in residential neighborhoods. There are two basic solutions: Phase converters and Variable Frequency Drives (VFD's).

Phase converters have been around for a long time. There are so-called static converters, but they are basically just a staring capacitor that turns your three phase machine into a single phase and robs you of 1/3 of the available power.
There also Rotary Phase converters that use another motor to generate the third phase from the other two.

VFD's take the incoming AC signal, turn it into DC and then use PWM methods to generate three phases of "AC" at arbitrary frequencies. Since there is already an intermediate step between the incoming power and the motor, these devices can run off either single phase (usually for 3HP or smaller drives) or three phase power. These Single Phase VFD's make an attractive alternative to Phase converters.

I choose to use a VFD for a couple of reasons:
1)  Cost - the VFD setup was about $150 cheaper than a Rotary converter from a reputable source
2)  Features - a VFD can soft start the motor and also offers other logic features built in.
3) CNC - a VFD can be controlled from a CNC system later on

Here is a schematic of the System I am planning on building:

 The blue box represents the operator panel, which will most likely be mounted underneath the DRO
The rest of the part will go into a NEMA 1 enclosure that will mount on the wall just below the Garage Sub-panel.

Control Box hardware on sub-plate.

Bridgeport Mill for the Garage - Part 2 Head Disassembly

The mill is in need of some maintainance. Here is a short list of the items that need to be done to the 2J head:

• Motor Pulley bushings need to be replaced
• Spindle Brake is worn out
• Colet set-screw needs to be replaced
• A couple of the upper section bearings are a little noisy
• The Back gear needs to be re-greased
• The belts probably need changing as well

 The easiest way to get all the parts needed was to order a rebuld kit from H&W Machine Repair.
While waiting for the parts to get here I started to tear down the head assembly. Here are all the pieces:

Motor and Variable Pulley

Upper Housing

Front Pulley and clutch shaft

Lower housing and Brake. Brake Dust still needs to be cleaned out

The rest of the Mill, looking a little naked rignt now

Spindle assembly removed from Quill. It only needs some new grease and a new set screw.

 The other outstanding issues are hooking up the Electrical System, fixing the X axis DRO scale and figuring out the backlash in the X axis.

Bridgeport Mill for the Garage - Part 1 - coming home

My employer is moving to a smaller facility and one of the bridgeport mills in the Engineering shop was not going to come with us. So I did the only logical thing and put in a bit for $1500. Well, I "won" so now I needed to get 2200 lbs of steel from Irvine to Oceanside. Here are some pictures of the move:

Safe at home after 60 miles

 So how does one unload a 1 ton machine at home? Fist, one must get it to the end of the trailer using lifting straps , a come-along and a breaker bar:

Drag like an Egyptian :)

Finally at the end of the trailer

Luckily, there was just enough clearance to back the trailer into the garage for the next step, lifting the mill with a 2 ton shop crane. Note the angle of the head in the next picture. This maximized the clearance for the door.

Ready for liftoff

 Once the mill was suspended, I gently pulled the trailer out from underneath and parked the mill on stacks of three bricks in order to get the shop crane out from underneath.

Removing the first birck

 The first row was easy to remove. Just jack up, take out the bricks and gently lower down. Unfortunately, at this point the jack is too high and the last two rows are more of an adventure.

The last two bricks....

 After an exciting game of jenga and some wresteling the macine with a large breaker bar, it was shimed and leveled:

All nice and Level

 The last step in setting up was to mix up some grout to fill in the 1/4" gap left by the shims. My garage floor does slope quite a bit.

Grouted in place :)

Next, Tearing down the VariDrive for re-building