Re: Bridgeport Tracer head.

>[To save your eyes and sense of reality this is mainly for people who know about Bridgeport mills or have one]
>
>Hello CNC'ers,
>
> I've been looking about and found a Bridgeport duplicator mill, it comes with the Tru-Trace 3D hydraulic controller and 2 J style heads. I've never seen this particular mill >before, I'm very new to the whole idea of mills (I don't own one yet). So, prepare youself as I unlesh an entire universe of questions:
>

John,
I think you need to look at the logistics of this a bit more deeply.
You are talking about moving a very heavy from the USA to the UK
Shipping costs would be about $5,000 to $8,000 alone.
Add this to the cost of the machine and you will finish up with a very
expensive piece of equipment that has no real worth in this country.

Why not look in the UK.
At the moment because of the 40% tax relief offered by the Government on
new CNC equipment in an effort to get engineering moving again there is a
surplus of older, non competitive equipment laying about out there.
Machine tool dealers don't want it as who are they going to sell an older
machine to ?

This is fact. Look at :-
http://www.metalworking.com/dropbox/_2000_retired_files/both.jpg
These are two CNC's I bought last year for 400 UKP each, that's about $600.
These are not unique, I also found for someone else a Matchmaker 4 axis
machine for 500 UKP and believe it or not a MK1 Bridgeport free for the
collection.
--

Regards,
John Stevenson
Nottingham, England