Bridgeport is home safe and sound.

[rhipsher]

Another exhausting day. Left work at 1:00pm to go pick up the Penske 26' truck with a 2,500lb capacity gate lift. Then go back to work to barrow the pallet jack and make the 45 minute drive up to Conroe. Then sleep in the truck for 2 1/2 hours until the owner shows up. Then we load it on a pallet and onto the truck. When he picked that machine up with the forklift and put it down on the pallet I could hear wood cracking from the crushing weight. I also put two more 4x4's in it for added strength. Once in the truck we strapped it down with 10,000lb tie downs. Made the trip to the house. Then called my boss up for help. This thing weighs 2,400lbs. To much weight for one man to try and muscle around. After that I headed back to work to drop the pallet jack off and back to Penske at 10:30 with only 30 minutes to spare before the yard gates close and get my car out of their yard before they close. Got back home at 1:00am.
Bridgeport mills are the standard by which all others are measured. They were the original manufactured in Bridgeport Connecticut USA. They have been copied buy everyone. Bridgeport is no longer in business so I'm proud to own one in such good shape. They are work horses and I've worked on them and made thousands of parts with them over my career in this trade. All other manual mills made today are made in China/Taiwan or Spain.








And although it does fit in the garage with the ZR-1 I already know how this is going to go. Once I start making parts I'll need all the room I can get especially when I get a Lathe. So I will have to put the Z in storage until I grow to the point where I can get my own building and move the business out of my garage.

[USAZR1]

Those things are stout,Rick! We have three of them in our shop,at work. I've made a few parts on them for some of my custom bike,car,& aircraft projects.

[Hog]

You know you have a quality product when a product line is refferred to by its name. Like facial tissues-Kleenex, Petroleum Jelly-Vaseline.

Vertical mill-Bridgeport.

Drool, the things I could do on a Brigeport, I have an old school metal lathe, complete with the old leather drive assembly. I have it setup from an electric motor through a Volkwagen 4 speed trans through a fabbed flat pulley driving a leather belt down to the lathe.
My Dad and I went driving through the USA looking for a 3 jaw chuck. We machined the backing plate for the chuck on THIS lathe and the chuck has never been removed. It concentricity is decent(if thats the correct term).

I've always been told that with a vertical mill and a lathe, there is NOTHING that cant be built. I watched a top 101 of all time inventions and dont remember seeing the lathe or mill on the list.

That is a very nice piece of machinery, I'm impressed that it isnt a huge oversized pice as well. That would be perfect for so many thing.

Question? What power requirements does it have? What HP is the motor? I', assuming if the shop is wired for 240AC for things like welders I'd be good for a unit like this?

Congrats.

[rhipsher]

Hog its 208V 3 Phase 60HZ. The motor is 1.5hp .After looking over the machine some more I discovered it came out of a community college in Nantucket. And I've never seen one with a box on the side that houses all of the electrical fuses and relays like this one until I took out the electrical diagram. Wow! This thing has auto lube system so you don't have to manually pump the way lube buy hand. Its on a timer. It also is equiped with an electric spray mist coolant system. You run the air line to it and the switch panel up front controls it and also controls the spindle forward and reverse low and hi gear. It also has buttons on the control panel to wire your power table feeds for X Y axis. I looked under the table to inspect the ways on the saddle and Y axis ways where you'd normally see shavings all over the place up in there. Its totally clean. It didn't see heavy industrial use in the community college. Also I've worked on mills that have .150 of slop in the lead screws. This one only has .017 play in them. That's pretty rare. I'm going to have a CNC repair friend of mine come out and wire it up to the 3 phase converter. I'm debating whether to hard wire it or make it a plug in so I can easily unpluge it to move around if I need to. Can't wait to fire it up.

[Schrade]

2,400 lbs?
Time to open up a can:

Originally Posted by rhipsher

Another exhausting day. Left work at 1:00pm to go pick up the Penske 26' truck with a 2,500lb capacity gate lift. Then go back to work to barrow the pallet jack and make the 45 minute drive up to Conroe. Then sleep in the truck for 2 1/2 hours until the owner shows up. Then we load it on a pallet and onto the truck. When he picked that machine up with the forklift and put it down on the pallet I could hear wood cracking from the crushing weight. I also put two more 4x4's in it for added strength. Once in the truck we strapped it down with 10,000lb tie downs. Made the trip to the house. Then called my boss up for help. This thing weighs 2,400lbs. To much weight for one man to try and muscle around. After that I headed back to work to drop the pallet jack off and back to Penske at 10:30 with only 30 minutes to spare before the yard gates close and get my car out of their yard before they close. Got back home at 1:00am.
Bridgeport mills are the standard by which all others are measured. They were the original manufactured in Bridgeport Connecticut USA. They have been copied buy everyone. Bridgeport is no longer in business so I'm proud to own one in such good shape. They are work horses and I've worked on them and made thousands of parts with them over my career in this trade. All other manual mills made today are made in China/Taiwan or Spain.








And although it does fit in the garage with the ZR-1 I already know how this is going to go. Once I start making parts I'll need all the room I can get especially when I get a Lathe. So I will have to put the Z in storage until I grow to the point where I can get my own building and move the business out of my garage.

[FU]

That's a great machine Rick. Congrats on a good buy ! Wishing you well on your new project

[Hog]

Originally Posted by rhipsher

Hog its 208V 3 Phase 60HZ. The motor is 1.5hp .After looking over the machine some more I discovered it came out of a community college in Nantucket. And I've never seen one with a box on the side that houses all of the electrical fuses and relays like this one until I took out the electrical diagram. Wow! This thing has auto lube system so you don't have to manually pump the way lube buy hand. Its on a timer. It also is equiped with an electric spray mist coolant system. You run the air line to it and the switch panel up front controls it and also controls the spindle forward and reverse low and hi gear. It also has buttons on the control panel to wire your power table feeds for X Y axis. I looked under the table to inspect the ways on the saddle and Y axis ways where you'd normally see shavings all over the place up in there. Its totally clean. It didn't see heavy industrial use in the community college. Also I've worked on mills that have .150 of slop in the lead screws. This one only has .017 play in them. That's pretty rare. I'm going to have a CNC repair friend of mine come out and wire it up to the 3 phase converter. I'm debating whether to hard wire it or make it a plug in so I can easily unpluge it to move around if I need to. Can't wait to fire it up.

Very nice, sounds like you got a really great pice of macjinery there. I'm jelly.

here's a couple pics of my lathe.

[BigJohn]

Don't use it much?

[Hog]

Originally Posted by BigJohn

Don't use it much?

Not recently. There is a bunch of crap sitting in between it and the tractor. Nice weather allows the car to come out of storage, and the cleanup to begin.

The last major service the lathe saw was to put a chamfer on the ends of pices of 3/8" rod. A chamfer bit sat in teh chuck, and another sat in teh electric drill in front of the tailstock. A pair of pliers held the rod, which was inserted being held with my left hand, while my right pushed a lever that moved the drill press into the chamfer bits, thus chamfering each end at the same time.
Then the rod gets either 2 or 3 hand bends using hand brakes
a hole drilled in one end
the hole is deburred
a custom made pin is set in the hole
my air powered quick stroke press then presses in the pin(made from an air brake cyclinder)
then the part gets heat treated and chromed.

I ran thousands and thousands of those parts. They were keys to remove the front panels of telephone booths. Lotsa manual muscle building motions, but the money was excellent.

[BigJohn]

I haven't seen a Telephone Booth in years.
I used them all the time!