Mill advice please?

I did what John mentioned and had a company move mine. It wasn’t very expensive and they put it exactly where I wanted it. Money well spent. We had a truck and trailer, but those surface grinders are top heavy and it scared us to move it.
Mine weighed like 800lbs and it is a manual machine.

You might try calling a company that moves safes and heavy equipment too.
 
I used a tow truck when I moved heavy machines, made it easy
 
I think I found a place that can move it for me. It’s not gonna cost an arm and a leg either, thank god. It’s actually might even be cheaper than renting the truck, trailer, and jack.
 
Here, check this out: an article on your grinder
http://www.lathes.co.uk/brown&sharpeno2grinder/

Full scans of operater's and parts manuals:
http://vintagemachinery.org/mfgindex/detail.aspx?id=2185&tab=3

From what I can find, your machine is about 1500 lbs or a little less.

Your grinder is a lot like mine - a 1940's mechanical automatic machine. It either has one motor in the base that powers both spindle and table drives via flat belt (like mine) or a separate spindle motor couple directly to the back of the spindle, on the column. I don't see a motor hanging off the back of your spindle but it could be the angle. At any rate, if it's the single motor type that's fortunate as a single VFD will work great. That's what I do. If two motors adding up to 3 hp or less, you may be able to get like a 3 hp VFD such as my TECO FM50203C and drive both motors at once (a risk, my drive will do it though as I've found out by mistake.)

You are fortunate that this is both a high quality and very common old machine.
 
kuraki said:
If you're willing to rent a truck and trailer, save yourself some grief and call a tow company to see what they would charge you to rig and set the machine for you. They will be able to do it with their smallest truck, and will do it in the way you proposed using a cherry picker, sling it under the boom, lift, drive trailer out from under it, back it into your shop and set on your concrete/pipes/rollers/etc. He only charged me $85 to do it. It took 30 minutes including unstrapping and BSing. Well worth the money. Hell, if the machine is local see what it would cost to pick it up where it's located and drop it at your shop, and maybe you can kill 2 birds without much more total spend than renting a truck and trailer.

For your phase question on the grinder, yes and no. If that's an automatic machine you have two motors to spin, the spindle motor and the feed motor. In many cases that feed motor is hydraulic. I think in the case of a No2 it's a flat belt setup. Either way it's generally not recommended to run multiple motors off a single VFD concurrently. So yes "all you would need...is a VFD" but, to operate the spindle AND the feed motor, you'd want 2 VFDs. Or a single phase convertor.
Click to expand...

Good points. My SG is an automatic. The spindle is 3 phase, but the drive motor and electro mag chuck runs off a single 110phase that piggy backs off one of the 3 coming in. I power it with a single VFD with no issue.
 
I got the machines. I ended up paying a towing company to haul them for me. I don’t think they had done much work like this before. They only charged me $185 and the two pieces were over 1hr away. It ended up taking 5-6hrs and a lot of hard work, even with a big tilt bed flat bed truck with a winch. Towards the end of the job the dispatcher was calling and leaving me irate messages on my phone because she couldn’t reach her drivers and the job was taking WAY too long. I made sure to get my machines off the truck before I called her back :D .

I was real nice with the movers, and threw them an extra $40 on top of the quoted amount. A little bit of appreciation can go a long ways. I called her back about 30mins after the movers left and she had cooled down and said everything was square.

I pretty much got things set where I want. Unfortunately the mill is sitting right on a crack in my garage floor. I will probably need to figure out a way to move it a foot or two to the left. I can’t even begin to think about moving it again at this point. My back is still not right lol.

Thanks a bunch for that article you found Salem. That’s awesome! Really makes me want to keep the machine. However, with my diminished equipment fund, I’m thinking of selling it to pay for tooling for the mill. I already have a Wuertz surface grinder attachment on my KMG anyway. After reading that article you posted I’m thinking about just keeping it though anyway. It doesn’t have a magnetic table for it though. I’d also have to figure out how to power it. Who knows, I’m still thinking about keeping it.

I just wanted to thank everyone again for all the help with this project. Especially those who talked me into hiring movers. This would have been a extremely hellish experience trying to do it with a friend. I’m sure I’ll be pestering you guys with mill questions now. I’m gonna start a account over on practical machinist forums too.

I’m gonna try and get some pics up here soon.
 
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Finally figured out how to post pics. Eureka!


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Congrats on the new machines. If you've never used a mill before, AGI has an excellent video with Darrell Holland on using a Bridgeport Mill.
As for Surface Grinding, that in and off itself is a seemingly dying artform. Norton puts out a couple of decent books, IIRC. VintageMachinery.org has some PDF versions, and you may even be able to find the manuals for your machines on the site as well.

As for moving your machines now, you'd be surprised how easy it is to walk the machine one way or the other with a 4ft (or longer) pry bar, pinch bar, or something like a johnson bar. They also make purpose built machine dollies for that kind of thing, but they're usually pretty expensive, and if you only need to move one machine a small distance, or once every long while or so, they're kind of over kill.
If you can get a couple of thick walled pipe or solid rounds under the machine, it's very easy to roll. Not sure if you've ever seen a house or shed rolled on logs, but it's the same principle.
 
Excellent that you got them to your place! Starting an account over at Practical Machinist is a great idea... do stop by the Antique Machine forums, lots of helpful folks over there with stuff like this.
For the love of God, KEEP the GRINDER! You'll be glad you did... I love mine and if it broke I'd be one sad dude.
 
Thanks again guys.

I’m thinking about keeping the grinder. I posted a listing on Craigslist stating that I was looking for a surface grinder and mill. That’s how I got these two machines. But I still have people hitting me up trying to sell me stuff lol. I guess a guy has a Delta Tool Maker surface grinder with for it. He also has a Harig(I think) surface grinder he wants $350 for. Finally he has a American Toolworks lathe from the 40s-50s, and it has a 21” 4 jaw chuck and is “about 61in between the centers.” I don’t know what that means but he thinks it weighs around 4000lbs. His boss wants $1000 for it but says the price is “definitely negotiable.” I would like a lathe but hadn’t really planned on looking for one until I got things figured out with the mill and surface grinder I have now. But then again, I have this almost primal urge to buy them lol. Do any of you guys know anything about American Toolmaker lathes or Delta Tool Maker surface grinders?

Finally, I need to get something to level/tram the head on this mill. I was thinking about just getting a dial indicator with a magnetic base. This one in particular:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Dial-I...545427&hash=item1c903d8a6d:g:hlIAAOSwtIBZqHU7

Do you guys think that would be adequate? I was thinking I could use it straight on the table or put my granite surface plate on top of it. Would that be the way to go or just go off the table? I’ve seen the dual dial indicator tools that chuck up into the quil to level the head. It would be nice to have one of those, but that’s beyond my budget at the moment, and if I can get it done well with a $40 Tool, I’d prefer to do that. I’d greatly appreciate any advice on what tool to get to accomplish this. I’d like to get it ordered tonight if possible, so it’d ship tomorrow. I have a budget of $45 for toys at the moment, so if I could get something that would work for less than that it would be awesome. Thanks again for everything guys! Going out to try and install this power feed right now.
 
That's not ideal for tramming a mill. You ideally want something that clamps on the spindle nose or in the spindle. You need it to spin with the spindle.

Most machinists will do this with an indicol and dial test indicator. Some will buy a specialized 2 indicators in one fixture meant only for tramming.

A good single indicator to do all the things is a Starrett button indicator, it has .050" of travel and can be set up to tram, indicate your vise or work, as well as holes.
 
American Toolworks made some of the best lathes ever, including the famous American "Pacemaker" lathes.
The hey day of the Pacemaker and some of their other lines, as far as manual lathes, was in the 40's and 50's.
They were very heavy and powerful for their size capacity. If it is a 21" swing or larger with 61" or more between centers, very likely it's more than 4000 lbs. At $1000 or under it could be a super sweet deal, but if it's pretty clapped out (like trashed spindle bearings, broken gears, or heavy way wear near the headstock) it would be more trouble than it's worth. Definitely warrants looking at!
I know what you mean about the primal urge to buy machines, I have to fend it off daily. Luckily I have very little money for that sort of thing usually, so that helps.
A Delta Toolmaker is way less of a grinder than that Browne and Sharpe you have. Bit of a toy in comparison, really- and not auto table, which really is a big deal. You want that on a grinder. A Harig? Maybe- would depend on the model, they are OK machines.
And, that combo you got of indicator and holder should be fine for tramming your mill and vise in.
 
The saga continues... I got my power issue fixed today and got all geared up to start buzzing through some steel.

I flip on the DRO and the X axis isn’t working. Urgh... It was working before. The Y axis is working fine. I unplugged the power cord and plugged it in. I unplugged the X axis sensor cable and blew out the insides and plugged back in. No luck. Finally I checked the line to make sure there was no kinks or anything. There wasn’t. No loose wires. This is so damn frustrating.

What’s happening is the x axis readout just starts flickering. I’ll be rotating the wheel and it’s just flickering. No movement. Sometimes it will move, but will then shut off. I took a short video of it and will put it below. If anyone has any idea what’s wrong I’d greatly appreciated the help, as always.


 
If it's a magnetic scale the first step will be to pull the sensor and reader and clean them thoroughly. Gunk on the scale or sensor will prevent them from reading, kind of like how an optical mouse doesn't want to track on certain surfaces. This does require some care.
 
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