Options for worn ways repair

Richard,
Thanks again for your help. In the end, I want a machine that I can trust to be fairly precise. Not planning on making any replacement parts for Boeing, but I can't live with the slop I have now either. A 75% improvement would be great.
I located the table in the mid position of x and y this morning and did a few measurement to explain the slop I have. (this is with the gibs as tight as I can adjust them) With a dial indicator on the end of the table, I can pull and push the end of the table .040" (horizontally, front to back). If I lock x and y, it's around .002" movement. If I only lock the y, the table has about .009 of movement. If I move the table to the front of the knee, and lock the x, there is about .005 movement.
Concerning the knee gib. When I was trying to figure this out on my own a few weeks ago, I had noticed that the gib was pushing the rear wiper out of position. My solution was to shorted the gib by 1/4", but of course, this didn't help my situation. I also had suspicion that the gib tightening bolt was bottoming out and not pulling the gib tightly, so I removed 1/8" from it, which didn't help either. Sure seems like no matter how tight I can turn the adjusting screw, it's not pulling the gib as tight as it should.

I paid $1700 for the machine, and got a few accessories with it.

Here are a few photos that I took this morning. I probably have double the expense in camera equipment than I do in my mill and lathe, and the camera hobby is what I use to pay for the metalworking equipment. (for some reason, by wife doesn't think I need another hobby???) If you want any photos of other locations, let me know.

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P.S. The hand-wheels were purchased from an EBay seller and were the best thing I added to the mill (so far).

Jack
Fort Loramie, Ohio

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As I was about to hit submit Jack called me. I will add this and then let him explain what he did this morning.


That really helps with the pic's I mentioned the help with the camera as many of the new members need help and are afraid to ask. I can see you could teach me a thing of two about taking pic's. When you check the gibs be sure to month the mag base on the knee and put the indicator on the saddle and put the mag base on the saddle to measure the table. I can see 2 fixes now. one will "patch it up" and no scraping will be needed and that is to glue some Rulon 142 to the riding side of the gibs and that will make the gibs fit better. Or scrape the ways and do it right. The ways look pretty bad (terrible) and need to be rescraped. The Rulon will compress a bit as it is moved to the tight ends, but you will no doubt still have the .003 to .005" slop. The ways have small scores in the and I would guess they are another .005" deep. You could install the gibs to where they would be when new. The thick end even with the back end and so the wiper plate will fit. You can use a feeler gage and see how much shim you will need to know what size Rulon to order.

You could take apart the machine and send the knee, table and saddle, gibs to a rebuilder and I would guess it would cost you $1500.00 to $2000.00 to get it rescraped. You would do all the dismantling and assembly. You could probably do it and if there happened to be a member close that had the tools and expertise he might help. Their is a guy who comes to the forum named Sidecar who specializes in Bridgeports and it might me worth while asking him for a quote. That's a major repair and I am sure you could do it, but never scraping and not having the correct tools, your looking at a BIG job. Is there any members close to him with the tools and expertise who can help him?
A thought just came to me. High Quality Tools is in Ohio who sell Millport parts and they may have a local rebuilder who might give you a deal if you do the mechanical work and all he does the scraping. I know some of the members might suggest you file and scrape the the ways to get them better, but as an instructor and pro i would never suggest you do that. What do you want to try? Rich
 
Before I called Rich this morning, I thought about the fact that there is a machine rebuilding business about 1/8 mile down the road from me. I've never been in the place, but stopped in to see about getting my table fixed up. He is going to get back to me with a price. I'm hoping that I don't get extreme sticker shock, but I do realize that repairing it requires a lot of time. I'll let everyone know once I get the estimate. The company is http://edwardsmachine.net . I got a tour of the place (maybe 5 employees) and it was neat to see all the pretty scraped pieces laying around. Once I get a price, I'll have to decide what avenue I'll go down.

Update: I didn't hear back from the company today with an estimate, so it'll be next week sometime until I get it.

Jack
 
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There is no cheap, easy fix. Scraping is time consuming, hard work. Many rebuilders will not accept a job to do a 75% fix, as their reputation is based on precision. Good luck on your project.

John Fahnestock
 
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There is no cheap, easy fix. Scraping is time consuming, hard work. Many rebuilders will not accept a job to do a 75% fix, as their reputation is based on precision. Good luck on your project.

John Fahnestock

John,
I understand those statements completely. We'll see what the estimate is.

Maybe I'll end up just takinga disc grinder to it! ;-):dunno:

Jack
 
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I think he was kidding....lol...But on some real bad scored ways on BIG machines that I could not move to a bigger machine to have it machined I have ground them that way. One did a hardened CNC lathe bed on a machine in Arkansas that was burried inside a shop. It would have cost thousands of dollars to have hired riggers to move the machines in the shop to get it out of there. I used a small angled air grinder with detachable pads and ground it instead of scraping it. Same way with a straight-edge and bluing. A very fast " Power Scraper" LOL When I got it close I used diamond lapping compound and a lappng plate and stones. Then put Rulon on the matching way. It worked ok. And a i say "no news is good news" or hearing back from the customer. ha ha. They did have me back several times to teach some more classes after that. I am sure many of us have done somethings that some would shake there head at. But what is the saying about the mother of invention? Having a mind blank this morning. I will be off line a bit over the next couple of days as i will be traveling to Taiwan for my 30 years of teaching classes reunion. It should be fun and I will take some pctures. Everyone have a fun day scraping :) Rich
 
I got a call from the re-builders this morning and he quoted $1600.00 for the repair. (Richard was right on with his guesstimate). He said that the cost reflects the fact that mine is worn a lot more than most they see. He knew that this wasn't really an option for me, since I also have some issues with head. (I'd be getting way more money into this machine that it'd ever be worth. (If it was a Bridgeport brand, I'd "probably" go ahead with it) He did suggest (as did Richard in a previous post) that I use some shims and find the thickness that the gibs would need added to them to make them more effective. They work with Trucite all the time and would gladly coat the gib with whatever thickness I need. I will probably go that route and see what kind of improvement I can get.

Jack
 
I got a call from the re-builders this morning and he quoted $1600.00 for the repair. (Richard was right on with his guesstimate). He said that the cost reflects the fact that mine is worn a lot more than most they see. He knew that this wasn't really an option for me, since I also have some issues with head. (I'd be getting way more money into this machine that it'd ever be worth. (If it was a Bridgeport brand, I'd "probably" go ahead with it) He did suggest (as did Richard in a previous post) that I use some shims and find the thickness that the gibs would need added to them to make them more effective. They work with Trucite all the time and would gladly coat the gib with whatever thickness I need. I will probably go that route and see what kind of improvement I can get.

Jack

Sounds like you have a good excuse to buy an Anderson scraper and a small camelback straight edge. Get it running and do the scraping later. Tim
 
Jack,

Too bad you're in Ohio. I'm doing almost the exact same repairs to a Bridgeport now. Yours sounds just like mine, measurments and all, except mine had a pretty paint job. Due to the price of professional rebuilding and the fact that I can't find anyone local to do a little pre-scrape planing, I'll be doing it myself. I took Richard's scraping class in September in Vermont and learned quite a lot. More importantly, I learned it's not an impossible undertaking. Getting all the measurement techniques down is more difficult than the scraping. Since I plan on restoring at least two lathes I currently have I bought a used granite surface plate and Biax machine scraper. The hand scraper, and CI straight edge I bought new and the bluing/spotting inks etc are relatively cheap. Altogether I thing I have about $1500 into scraping equipment. Gauges I already had and gadgets to use them I can make.

I will be posting my progress, good or bad, on you tube. I figured others could benefit from what I'm learning. I will make a post here when I get the first video edited. We (my 14 year old and I) just shot it last night. Getting the mill done is my New Year's Project.

I must say that the difference in performance of my lathe compound after scraping it in is substantial. No rock, far less chatter on big cuts and no binding at the ends of travel. I can't wait to get the cross slide done. I still need to scrape in a small CI Prism (can't have enough references).

Good luck to you. I'll look in on your progress. Hello to you Richard and Happy New Year all.

Mark
 
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