How Expensive Is A Sloppy Table On A Mill???

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B.R. McCall

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Yesterday,I looked at a milling machine. It is a Newport (which after several hours of reading and looking at pictures, seems to be an almost exact copy of a Bridgeport series 1 J head).

The man selling it wants $1500 and said he would hold it for me till Monday. There is not any tooling except for 6 r8 collets. No vice or clamps. The power feed motor is missing. On the plus side is has a pathfinder-5 DRO that mostly works (there are a couple of numbers that are missing "legs?" ie.. a 6 looks like a lowercase h and a 8 looks like and uppercase H)

I am a total noobie to machining, and doubly so to repairing and replacing parts. Please bare with me, as I am not always sure what things are called, but I try to use descriptive language if I can.
I would love to have somebody who knows what they are looking at go with me and give me an opinion. Unfortunately, there are no clubs or community collages any where close (hour south of Orlando) to me and I don't know any machinists.

So here is my observations of the machine, and I would like an idea of the difficulty and price of fixing the problems:

The feed knob on the x axis (the long way or side to side) will turn about 180 degrees before moving the table. The y axis knob (short way or front to back) will turn about 90 degrees before moving the table.


The other thing I found that if you stand at the long end of the table and push/pull in the x(?) axis, the table will move back and forth about an inch.
If you stand in front of the mill and push toward the back at one end or the other of the table, you can move it back an forth about an inch.

Pretty sloppy, but can it be fixed? More importantly, can it be fixed at a reasonable (cheap) price by a total noob?

Thanks in advance!

Bryant
 
i would forget about it
sounds like a total wreck
if you havent got experience in rebuilding you wouldnt want it for free
 
I have a round ram with a J head much tighter then that and paid $500 that slop is a no no. front to back of the x axis. You can do better.
 
A Bridgeport has backlash adjustments on both axis nuts.
If your just moving the table the backlash amount it may be a simple fix.
But if the X axis rotates 180 degrees that should only be .100 in table slack movement.
.050 on Y with 90 degree slack in the handle.
$1500.00 is cheap for mill in my area.
 
I've gotten to a point in my life where I don't buy things that aren't gtg when I get them home, I used to buy fix-r-up equipment, sometimes it was a quick and easy fix, other times I took a bath with my time and money.

Maybe look what it takes to fix similar problems on a like model Bridgeport to get a possible idea of time and money to fix. Have you looked at your local Craigs List to see what may be available?
 
B.R. McCall said:
The other thing I found that if you stand at the long end of the table and push/pull in the x(?) axis, the table will move back and forth about an inch.
If you stand in front of the mill and push toward the back at one end or the other of the table, you can move it back an forth about an inch.
Click to expand...

Lead screw backlash is one thing, that's many times adjustable to a reasonable level, and it sounds like the bearing preload needs to be adjusted also. What concerns me is the amount you can move the table around. That could be as simple as loose gibs, or the machine is completely trashed. I would expect the 1 inch movement that you're getting to be a couple thousandths at most. Without looking at it, it's hard to tell.
 
B.R. McCall said:
Yesterday,I looked at a milling machine. It is a Newport (which after several hours of reading and looking at pictures, seems to be an almost exact copy of a Bridgeport series 1 J head).

The man selling it wants $1500 and said he would hold it for me till Monday. There is not any tooling except for 6 r8 collets. No vice or clamps. The power feed motor is missing. On the plus side is has a pathfinder-5 DRO that mostly works (there are a couple of numbers that are missing "legs?" ie.. a 6 looks like a lowercase h and a 8 looks like and uppercase H)

I am a total noobie to machining, and doubly so to repairing and replacing parts. Please bare with me, as I am not always sure what things are called, but I try to use descriptive language if I can.
I would love to have somebody who knows what they are looking at go with me and give me an opinion. Unfortunately, there are no clubs or community collages any where close (hour south of Orlando) to me and I don't know any machinists.

So here is my observations of the machine, and I would like an idea of the difficulty and price of fixing the problems:

The feed knob on the x axis (the long way or side to side) will turn about 180 degrees before moving the table. The y axis knob (short way or front to back) will turn about 90 degrees before moving the table.


The other thing I found that if you stand at the long end of the table and push/pull in the x(?) axis, the table will move back and forth about an inch.
If you stand in front of the mill and push toward the back at one end or the other of the table, you can move it back an forth about an inch.

Pretty sloppy, but can it be fixed? More importantly, can it be fixed at a reasonable (cheap) price by a total noob?

Thanks in advance!

Bryant
Click to expand...

I don't know what part of the country you're from so it's hard to put a value on the machine. In my area an off brand fixer upper would be closer to 500 than 1500. If you don't really know how to judge or repair a mill its probably not the machine you want anyway. Actually it sounds like you did a good job of inspecting the bottom end of it. Now you know that at very least it's going to need adjusting and most likely has a lot of wear. I'd look a comparable mill and compare. I guess it depends on how badly you need a mill.
 
Sounds like some one robbed the gibs out the table/saddle to cause all of that side to side movement. As others have said, "better pass on this one!"

You live near where one of my kids was living last year at Ft Pierce.
 
There will always be another one coming along ( I often have to remind myself of this ). I think I would pass on this one and use what you've learned to find something in a little better shape. If you had someone knowledgeable to look at for you there is a chance it may be a simple fix. You could ask here if someone close by might be willing to check it out for you. You could take that $1500 and buy a smaller/newer mill and learn all the basics, and then when you are ready for something bigger you could pass it on and recoup most or all of your original purchase price and use it toward something bigger/better. Mike
 
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