Moving an ENCO mill/Drill

Ernienoatrainz

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I will be moving my ENCO table top Mill/Drill from a garage set up to a basement set up in a new house. I am planning to remove the 4 bolts that hold the column and head to remove the whole top of the machine. In addition, I’ll be taking the motor off also. I’ll be using a shop crane for the removal and replacement. Does anyone know if I’ll be creating a problem doing this? I know it will need to be set up and re tramed in the new location. I am trying to lighten the load for the move by having three pieces to move. I plan to have another person to help.
 
No, you won't create any problems. To get things as light as possible, remove the motor, then remove the cap on top of the column. Then remove the head; crank it to the top of the rack and you can then lift it off the top of the column. Then remove the 4 column bolts and the column comes off. You can go further and remove the table if you need to get it lighter.
 
As with the lathe, I'm not familiar with the specifics of the Enco mill, but most can be fairly easily broken into smaller parts for moving.

I recently moved a small Clausing mill into my basement and we broke it down into about 6 major components (base, column, table, head, motor, and power feed). Just make sure you keep the parts labelled and together for anything that isn't obvious how it goes together. It is very easy to get distracted when moving and what seemed easy to take apart can be harder to put back together when 3 weeks have gone by and you are trying to remember what goes where.

If you are talking about something like an RF-31, I'd think you could easily remove the head and table making 3 much easier to move loads.
 
The head is the heaviest piece but the base, table and column aren't exactly light. It depends on how much you want to struggle with it. If it were me, I would take off the motor, pull the head, remove the column and table from base. The column and head together are about 300 pounds, the base and table together also about 300. If you take it down one more step the heaviest part will be around 200 and way easier to get ahold of. You can put a 2x4 through the column channel through the head to give yourself handles as it is awkward to hold onto otherwise.

If your basement steps are like mine, 2 feet wide and steep planning ahead is key.
 
Thanks all. It is reassuring to have advice on the move. All very good ideas that I will incorporate. My move is not for another 3 months, so I have plenty of time to prepare. I’ll also have access to the new house before the flooring goes in keeping damage to the house low.
 
That's exactly the way I moved mine. Have some shim stock on hand for reassembly and tramming.

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By disassembling the mill/drill into a few smaller pieces you are going to eliminate the possibility of something being tweaked because the heavy mill/drill head is bouncing around unsupported while being moved.

When I move something like this (in particular radial arm saws) I lower the head onto a piece of wood so it is resting on the table instead of having all the strain on the column. In my opinion disassembly is better than just supporting the head.
 
Granted I didn't have a basement to deal with and had plenty of room to move around here's how I did it. It looks a bit sketchy lifting the entire weight from the head but it felt fine. Later on I found out that it's what the Grizzly's manual suggests too, which at the time I didn't know about and I knew nothing about mills so I wasn't going to start taking it apart, sometimes ignorance is bliss! lol

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Take it to as small a pieces as you can to move it down to the basement. Then you can clean it while you are at it.
When putting it back together the main thing will be getting it back in TRAM. I took my new to me one apart after getting it home, cleaned everything then put back together and did all the alignments etc. Was not that big of a deal with the engine hoist to get the head off then take the col off. Taking the table off will also reduce weight for getting it down to the basement.
 
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