Awesome. I know I'm in the minority here but when I look at those pics I keep staring at the Bridgeport. Super clean, beautiful machine.
That bridgeport is gonna be like Pedrosa now. No love, over there all by itself playing 2nd fiddle. Just a glorified drill press now.
It's a great machine. Came out of an abandoned house, was really rough but I didn't know enough to walk away at the time. One day I just decided to take the whole thing apart and rebuild it. I added a 3 axis DRO, quill DRO, X axis power feed. I found a 42" table with ball screws to replace the 36" table. Here's a before and after pic. The one in the background is another I rebuilt after I started taking in Bridgeport strays. I sold that one to make room for the new machine.
Seriously nice. What kind of paint did you use? I’m toying with the idea of re doing lathe but I don’t want it to be down for log.
And when you're done with yours, you can do mine Scott! Beautiful job on the refurb Bridgeport. I used to be decent on a manual mill, but since I went CNC, my skills have really faded. With the reasonable cost and performance that Haas has brought to the market, combined with Fusion 360 democratizing CAD/CAM, it feels like we're living in a golden age of access to manufacturing ability.
Well Charlie and I rolled in the replacement for the little BF20L Mill I bought to learn on. Slightly larger, 3 phase so more HP, All linear ways and servos everywhere. Now I can get into learning rigid tapping and some other stuff. Powered up.. All set in place to begin leveling and setup tomorrow. Let the learning continue..
It is the correct size for something to put in the garage and the HP beetle still fits in front of it.. About 2570 lbs.
I like the full enclosure (and so will you). Don't think I've ever heard of that brand, but it looks well equipped for such a small footprint. I still wouldn't be able to squeeze one into my garage though .
I had one on the previous machine that I designed and built. It didn't take me long to realize that the mess needed to be contained.
Looks like it fits nice in the garage How big is the coolant tank? If you're on city water use that, I'm on a well and used distilled, I found out distilled water is soft and it foamed up alot spilling over the edge of the tank. I switched to using city water and problem solved. Looks like the machine has a remote pendant too? This site is great for getting tool holders and certain endmills https://www.maritool.com/ Here's a refractometer that I use for checking the coolant concentrate levels https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013S2CPAE/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 These fan nozzles turned vertical work well for getting coolant to different height tools https://www.mcmaster.com/10095k26
The tank is U shaped and wraps around under the front of the machine. I am guessing it'll hold 20 to 25 gallons. It's got wheels on it so maintenance is a simple pull out form the front of the machine. Chip trays and strainers sit on top of it. I'm good on city water and already have all the gear for coolant from the previous machine. Part of the deal for the mill included all his tooling, end mills and vises and that covers enough to fill out the 12 tool ATC. I started working my way through the control manuals this morning. Pretty straight forward and not too much different from the control interface I was running on the little mill. Todays agenda is to start the leveling process, clean up the coolant tank and work through learning the tooling offset process in this control.
Everybody hold you tongues just right I am about to unleash the first run working in metreek. This could be a hold my beer moment.
Well shit. I didn't break anything. That was uneventful. Going from 100 IPM rapids to 400 IPM is a bit unnerving. I can't fathom the guys hit the cycle start button on a 1000 IPM machines.
I knew the tool paths would be good but I don't have a probe and tool setter to work with on this one. I had to work through tool offsets and work offsets with nothing but a dial indicator. Good news is a I learned some new to me techniques for measuring the tool radii and tool length. This also my first run using a tool changer so making sure I had all the details right was a test of patience.
Be sure you use the same "spacer" to set tool offsets all the time. We always used a true 1 inch carbide block. Using paper leaves no room for error. Heck we have cut at 400ipm lol. Let's see something you've done. We are ready.