Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] PLEASE HELP in cleanup of bridgeport

Hello Stan,
I am not a specialist on Bridgeport but I had to repair several.
The ones with chromed ways were soft in the casting and only the chrome
was
hard.
The ones without chrome only the oldest ones I had to deal with had nice
hard ways.
There seem to be a lot of their machines I saw from 1970's that are dead
soft and wear fast.

I do not want to flame on this brand but you have to look close to them.

For my personal taste I prefer my french Grafenstaden 1,3 meter long bed
for 1,2 meter travel
while a Bridget (as Tim calls his) generally has only a bed of 50 cm for
a travel of 80 cm.

You seem to bee lucky with your machine, because there are kinds of
graphite that are really abrasive. (For cleaning the ball screw watch
the other post.)

Good Luck
Sven Peter

skrumme@... wrote:

> Well, I do enjoy reading and have learn alot from this list. I
> posted this message on a machinst list but didn't get far with any
> help. I actually had meant to post here but was late at night and
> was too tired.
>
> Have just finished making space in the garage and moved in a
> bridgeport J head mill. I will be working on the electronic for CNC
> conversion, but did not want to do the mechanical conversion of the
> mill also (1st time around on this). This mill was previously used in
> cutting graphite for heater elements and has a collection of suity?
> oily grunge all over. The painted surfaces are not to bad. It is set
> up with ball screws and size 42 SloSyn steppers. Serial number around
> ~150000 puts this mill around 1975?. This mill also has a oneshot
> oiler system installed. I have a manual on the way.
>
> In spot cleaning on the ways I was quit pleased to discover chromed
> ways, so far where ever I have cleaned and checked I see the scrape
> marks. I would have thought graphic would be abrasive to the ways. Is
> graphite too soft to easily damage the ways? If they are chromed is
> it safe to assume they were flamehardened also? Were all bridgeports
> of that vintage flame hardened and chromed ?
>
> Next step is a real good cleaning. The one hand crank on the Y axis
> (left-right?) doesn't feel very smooth and I am thinking of the
> graphite in and on the ball screws. Yes, its all over, and up under
> the table on the screws. What is the best way to clean these ball
> screws. Now I am going to guess - DONT TAKE IT APART! If my guess is
> true then does one just flush it out, wipeing down the exposed shaft
> and moving the nut from one side to the other, repeating this till
> its all cleaned out?
>
> Am I best off removing the table from the sadddle (yah, this is heavy
> stuff). Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated. Is there
> any way to tell if this was factory CNC motors/screws or a retrofit
> from some other company?
>
> Thanks, Stan Krumme. KO6YB

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