Bridgeport for Beginners!

Problem solved! You guys are the shit! Massive thanks!

Diamond bit made short work of the cast iron. Flattened it almost completely off and with my thicker machine bushing, left a nice amount of end float.

 

This is where backlash gets created over the years. Understanding and dealing with backlash made machinists brilliant 50 years ago. Along came the DRO... Accounting for backlash became a thing of the past.

Ya, sure the manufacture could have installed bronze T-sleeves or even Precision thrust bearings on both sides. This is the feed rod. There is not a heck of a lot of force driving on it. But years of light wear. Most of the transmission force is put into the lead screw.

Jason, give me the sizes you are looking for, and I'll bang something out from Ampco bronze.
1.564” OD.

 

Thanks Matt.... I appreciate the offer man, I'd like to think this is good enough for now. The paint is drying now on this stuff and it goes back together when it's dry.

I don't know why the inside of this and under it was white, but it's white again. I'm not putting paint on the flat surfaces, it will just look like shit in a week.



It's not an exact match for the original paint, but close enough for me.

 

So what happened to the DRO install you might be wondering??? Or not... Well, I had it installed and was working great. I thought I had plenty of clearance on the cross slide, but while machining that tool recently, the auto crossfeed went right to the limit and I crashed the scale. YUP! Busted my new toy. I ordered another 250mm scale, but opted not to wait for the ToAuto scale from china. I got schooled real fast on that one! Cost me many hours today, re machining 2 of the 3 brackets for it. Once I hooked it up, it didn't work! In the box with this scale came a little 6inch cord so I hooked it onto the readout and everything was fine. Why these clowns opt to not wire these things in a standard manner is beyond me? ARRGGH. Rather than screw with soldiering tiny wires in the correct order I said, good enough!

Here is the cross slide wearing it's cover. Needs a little door for my removable block. I can still reach my locks and oil ports.
I had to move the entire scale towards the operator about 3/4" to make sure I had clearance on the reader head hiding between the ways.
I lost about 1inch of reach on the tail stock. I need to build the bump stop NOW so that one doesn't happen.


Good old aircraft adel clamps to the rescue here. I want to live with it and see how I want these to follow the apron.



Working great. For the money, it's hard to beat these cheapy DRO's. 2 scale kit for less than 200bucks?? WHAT A DEAL!

 

So I finally fixed my oiler system only to find out not all locations were getting squirted. I looked around and while guys had some ideas, the consensus was open your billfold. Being the occasional tightass that I am sometimes, I had nothing to lose. Turns out this worked a charm. I cleared up all of the meters. 3 of them blew air excessively through them. I'm not super smart, but I sing the song. One of these things is not like the other. I only have to buy 3. Not too shabby.

 

The time has come to do something about the old BP vise. It's cool, but the jaw lift is a pain in the ass.

Found this 6" beauty for 300. No shipping, no tax, no receipt.. Couldnt leave it behind. Kurt really does make a nice piece of equipment... I see why they are so expensive now.


The guy had this beast too. 40bucks seemed fair to me.


Matt talked me out of this KO lee surface grinder.. Probably best, I'll find something non hydraulic that's had a little gentler life. This one sold for 400.

 

Nice Slotted Angle Plate, now you have a new project removing the condensation rust. I am a big fan of Evapo-Rust for anything I can fit in my 5-gallon bucket. Bigger than that I switch to Naval Jelly (Phosphoric acid). This is the mill I just rebuilt and spent a lot of quality time removing rust.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/XqvWPY7zikgGrKX1A

 

Your mill looks fantastic! I'm a big fan of evaporust. Someday, I'd like to paint my bridgeport, but for now I cant live without it up and running.

 

evaprust with paper towel on the surface and a ketchup bottle with pin hole lightly saturating the paper towel for five or six hours works magic. A quick cleanup afterwords using Varsol in a spray bottle and paper towel cleanup prepares most surfaces for polishing or painting. Keep in mind, most metal surfaces are best coated with some kind of oil based paint or two part epoxy paint.

I do use two-part epoxy paints when required. But most often for machine surfaces I like using Sherwin Wiliams industrial enamel paint, thinned 8-12% with xylene through a spraygun. Or Applied with a brush, from brush or foam roller.

I might be getting ahead of you, but always try to use oil base treatment on metal.

I am personally trying some new rattle can Oil based etching primer On some 70-year-old castings. So far so good with no bleed through.

 

That looks good Matt. Is that paint or primer? I have to admit, I've been pretty happy with the way that rustoleum has been holding up on my positioner. After paint, I parked it on the table next to my vise and it gets whacked all the time with flying shit and oils. Then there is my standard avgas cleaning regimen. I'm horrible I know, but the stuff cleans anything!

 

This is a great idea for parts that don't fit in my 5-gallon bucket! Evaporust is so much easier than phosphoric acid.

out of curiosity what do you consider requiring 2 part epoxy? It would be a nice durable finish. I mostly used rustoleum spray cans, 2 coats clean metal primer and 2 coats paint.

 

Another technique is after soaking a blue paper towel, wrap whatever you have with cheap sarhan wrap. The stuff doesnt dry up that way.

 

Now if only I could get kurt to send me some new stickers.. This is 3 coats of brush on rustoleum dark blue. Less obnoxious than the factory blue.
Anyone have any idea what could be really dark green and kinda gooey I dug outta this thing?
Coolant maybe? It was almost waxy and had chips stuck in it. Whatever it was, it's gone now and this thing is dialed in pretty close. I got it less than half a thou all around. Go ME!

 

I would have thought you'd be working on a set of patterns to cast it in ductile iron by now Jason . some hydraulic oils are dark green, not sure if it's naturally that way or dyed as there's a few different oil types, e.g. napthenic or paraffinic.

 

That inhibitor goo they use on aviation stuff is green and horrid and nothing seems to shift it, even 50+ years in salt water!

 

Peedee.. That's zinc chromate.. Best stuff on aluminium. Now outlawed by the bunny huggers.

Mark, I'd cast that sucker in bronze first. I liked the old bridgeport vise and I'm not getting rid of it... At least not until the nineteenth time I stub a toe on it. The one thing that sucks with machining stuff is my god is it all HEAVY! That BP vise has got to be 120lbs with the swivel base on it. I never swiveled it and I bet the kurt swivel is pricey!

 

What a weekend! I spent it standing at the lathe and mill building up some crap for actual work.

First up, this junk HF wrench was in need of a size change. I whacked off a chunk of round stock and bobs your uncle. Easy way to hold an un parallel object in the vise. I can't take credit for this, I saw Stuart Haro show this idea. It works pretty good. I should have grabbed the skil saw, but I wanted to try this cutter. It chewed through the round stock with ease. And it was super accurate in the positioner. Glad I have that heavy beast! I know this was overkill, but was fun to try.




This worked good, Ya gotta make sure it's REALLY tight and take small cuts.
It worked better when I made a 3rd point of the wrench contact the corner of the jaws on the vise.


Next on the hit list, we needed some way to hold a super expensive landing gear strut without F'ing it up and also remove the end off it. The thing was insanely tight! SO I found a thick chunk of aluminum and ran down the street. My buddy hogged out the holes on the tormach. Each hole took about an hour to mill out. One hole was almost 4inches and the other was around 3.5" I think.






With the holes cut out, I needed a simple way to get this thing down to size. Bring on the skil saw!




With it chopped up into manageable pieces, I only faced the top and the bottom. I was running outta time and pretty, was down on the list.
I needed it to work and needed it DONE. Here I'm drilling to friggen CHINA! I wanted this thing fat and chunky so I drilled 1/2" holes almost 7inches through
the entire block! Usually, going this far, you end up coming out the side or in the next town. I might have got lucky, they came out right in the middle on the bottom.
I was concerned with rigidity with a dumbass setup like this... My concern was buttkiss. This heavy chunk wasn't going anywhere!
Oh! And that Kurt vise???? BEST TOOL EVER! Only thing that kept pissing me off last weekend was the STUPIDLY long vise handle. It kept hitting the
Y axis table crank.



Now it was time to cut them in half. I say them, remember I'm making TWO of these things. One for the outside of the strut and one for the piston.
2 Different sizes of course. This is a 1/4" endmill. After plowing out 7/8ths of it, I finished it with the angle grinder than machined the surfaces.



Here is the idea... With 3/16" rubber glued in, it's protects the olio.


With that done, let's look at the end of this monster. You can see where some monkey has dorked up these holes a little. They
are .185 in diameter and about the same deep. So not much room for error. I turned hardened 1/4-20 bolts from ace hardware to fit, cut to
length and figured out the distance from a non existent point in the middle? I was tired just thinking how the Fk I was gonna do this.
Sneaky trick>>>> I installed two pins opposite of each other, measured from outside to outside of the pins and subtracted the thickness of one pin!
BINGO! I then applied some real small logic to my goofy number and that was that!



With a socket cut down and welded to some 3/8" plate I was ready to make the tool. A welding positioner is on the list... but way down the list.
That is a 1/2" drive socket.


Chucked up and ready to make it round... I still haven't found a 4 jaw that wont break the bank. Not a big deal here, this worked well.


This shitty steel machined nice. I almost made a fatal mistake and un chucked it... Then I remembered I needed that very CRITICAL center! GO ME!!
The center helped me align this thing on the mill. From there it was easy work with the DRO! If you have a mill and are too cheap or lazy to install a $200 DRO,
I really feel bad for you! I can't count to 20 without taking my shoes off! I'd be LOST if I had to run silly dials and deal with miles of backlash.



I missed a photo of it back on the mill in the positioner to lay out the holes, but after tapping this thing, it worked perfectly.




Here it is FINALLY in use. It still took a heat gun pointed at the end for 20mins AND a 5foot cheater bar on the end of that breaker bar!
Told you it was TIGHT! I really had my doubts about these cheap turned down bolts from Ace, but after seeing my guys do their best to bust these
4, I don't think I'll even bother to make them a spare set. Well, maybe I might...

Ignore the JUNK vise! It's a piece of shit attached to a table on wheels.


In addition to this nightmare, I made 5 new jack handles that walked off from our jacks, turned a block to press out wheel bearing races
AND carved out this UGLY wrench to remove the main collar that holds this strut together! Believe me, this wrench won't win any beauty contest,
but it turns that beat up nut to the right of my clamp with the greatest of ease. Sorry, no photo of the completed wrench, but I will say, machining
a 1/2" SQUARE hole to accept a breaker bar is a huge pain in the ass. No broaching stuff for me yet.

3/8" junk from the scrap pile. The only part I machined were the flats and the 1/2" breaker bar hole.. I caught the guys using a 3ft PIPE WRENCH when they were taking this apart!
I'm just glad this strut isn't mine!

 

That is the quick and dirty way. I love it. A good tablesaw set up... there's another quick and dirty way. This is how we do it in industry with 3/8 to 1 inch stock.

If there was a way to slow down the sawblade and have more control you can cut right through mild steel with the same process. You can literally turn a 12 inch blade at 100 RPM and cut through mild steel like butter. We call these cold cut saws. They usually turn at 350 RPM to 700 RPM what a coolant flood. In the past couple years 1200 RPM saws have flooded the market.

 

Everything about this weekend was quick and dirty. Those 2 big blocks aren't even square... Not by a country mile. My guys were blown away with all their new FREE TOYS!
THIS is why I wanted this crap in my garage. When your balls are in a vise, just having the ability to un screw your own ass on a weekend is worth every penny!
The week before it was new tops for 3 of our jacks. Now they can happily accept the load cells for weighing aircraft!



My buddy welded the tops on with a 350amp mig welder. I wasn't taking any chances with my tig machine or skills on these. RULE #1, know when you are over your head!
The pole he is welding on here is 6 inches in diameter for the mains and the smaller nose jack pole is on the trash can here.

 

I love this thread. Every bit of this is you learning outside your box. Looking for help and discovering new things. Many others are learning new things to from this thread. I have to admit, I've learned a thing or two here!