Bridgeport

Hi all, I currently have a Raglan vertical mill, a tom senior horizontal, a kerry pillar drill and a shaper. Would it be a good idea to chop them in for a bridgeport? It would definitely save some room, but would the Bridgeport replace all those machines? and is it a case of putting all my eggs in one basket?

I am looking for a bridgeport but don't want to commit until I am sure about it.

Any advice welcome..

T

Bridgeport will deal with all your vertical and horizontal milling, if you insist on horizontal you will need the right angle drive. I have such a drive but rarely use it, but it is available should I choose.. The Bridgeport is an excellent pillar drill, so what do you use a shaper for? You could keep the shaper if its footprint is small.

Hi tractor man,

Well it depends, is the short answer. The Bport will do most jobs the Raglan and tom senior will do, unless they are rare extraordinarily large-model mills.

Taiwanese Bport clones are almost as good and just as durable as genuine Bport mills in my experience, and cost far less, especially used.

For drilling, the common Bports have only 5" quill travel, and the knee can not be easily swung out of the way to drill a tall workpiece (like a tractor half shaft for a hub stud to be drilled out.) If your pillar drill is a floor model that does allow tall work to be drilled, and or has more quill travel, keep it.

The shaper will make a nicer job than an endmill in a Bport on large flat surfaces. Shapers are also really good at deep internal splines, square sockets and keyways too (again common stuff on tractors) and Bports aren't. I would say keep the shaper if you have room in addition to the Bport. For dovetail gibs, shapers can do them with simple single point tools. In a mill, more expensive angled cutters or saws must be used for dovetail gibs usually, unless small endmills are used with large relief cuts (if you ever foresee yourself doing any dovetail gibs).

You will find a Bport ideal for precision drilling and light milling of complex shapes, especially with a DRO fitted to at least the X and Y axes. Bports and B port clones are great for model making in general.

If you buy a Bport used be aware that table gib wear is usually much worse in the middle range of table travel and so many sellers crank the gibs down to make them appear tighter in the middle, but this causes stiffness at the ends of travel. If you are looking at a mill and you can hardly move the table screw handles at ends of travel, but they work smooth in the middle, the mill probably has been "fine adjusted" that way. Transmission and motor repairs are usually relatively expensive and complicated in Bports and Bport clones compared to say a shaper or drill press.

Just some food for thought, and my $0.02, your mileage may vary. Good luck.

JD

Hi There

I have drilled 12 inch deep holes on a Bridgeport.

Don't let depth of hole stop you.

A horizontal mill is not very useful in the home workshop.

I doubt the shaper is worth bothering with either.

I would go with a Bridgeport.

My pillar drill has only been used twice in 5 years.

regards David

Hello Tractor man.

The Bridgeport is certainly a very versatile machine, and capable of all manner of contortions to get a job done.

We have one at work and on a few occasions long shafts have been safely and securely clamped vertically down the side of the table, or horizontaly on the table with the head tilted over to work on the ends. A bit tricky but sometimes possible.

Five inches of quill travel might not seem much for a machine this size, but most pillar drills up to medium size don't have any more than that. If using it regularly for drilling you just have to be extra careful not to plunge the drill into that nice precision table or milling vice, ouch!

The right angle drives for horizontal milling mentioned by Kwil do work well, and new ones are sometimes on offer at Model Engineering Exibitions for around £200.

I agree with Jeff regarding the copies made in the far east, some of these are certainly just as good as the genuine Bridgeport, so don't be put off if you come across one for sale. I remember a couple of these i looked at several years ago, one marketed by Gate and the other by Warco. They were both excellent in every detail and almost identical to the real thing.

In fact i fancy one myself now. I recently bought a classic Massey Ferguson so it might come in handy.

All the best.

Edited By Lathejack on 22/04/2012 00:33:02

Edited By Lathejack on 22/04/2012 00:34:01

By selling the present kit you give some other Modellers who can't afford a Bridgeport the chance to extend their workshop. Thankyou.

I can't understand this 'never use the drill now Ive got a mill/drill. Nowadays farmers keep their old tractors with a hedgecutter or yard scraper permanently attached. The time/cost of putting the special device onto their main 600HP tractor is greater than the value of the old tractor. Why take the time to remove milling cutter & vice to fit drill chuck when you've got a machine waiting with chuck fitted? I have two drills. The small one has a 3mm permanently fitted for starting holes. I'll coordinate drill when I get too unsteady to mark and pop.

Here's my take on the above:

1) A Bridgeport can be very versatile, especially if you have all the accessories. However, partly because of it's versatility, it is a bit floppy. So you're not going to be taking heavy cuts. I do have a right-angle drive, but apart from running it to check it worked I've never used it in anger. I wouldn't want to take heavy cuts with it. If I was in the market again I'd consider something like the Beaver, similar versatility but someines with an INT40 taper, so a bit more rigid.

2) Here I disagree with David; I think there is a place in the home workshop for a horizontal mill. If nothing else they make a brick built outhouse look wimpy, so you can take heavy cuts, which doesn't half speed things up. All the spur gears for my traction engines have been cut on a horizontal mill. The gears are 6DP and 5DP, some in cast iron and some in EN24T. Each tooth was cut full depth in one pass with no problem. Another area where I find a horizontal mill useful is slitting saws. For some reason on the Bridgeport I always find slitting saws go walkies and wander when trying to cut deep slots. On the horizontal mill I'm happy taking a 1" depth of cut in one go with a slitting saw, with no fear of it wandering.

3) Just to balance things up, here I agree with David; I hardly ever use my pillar drill. Most of the holes I drill need to be accurate, so if I have a part in the vice on the milling machine undergoing machining why would I want to take it out in order to drill an imprecise hole before putting it back?

4) I do have a shaper, but rarely use it, for keyways and the like I find the slotting head on the Bridgeport generally meets my needs.

Mind you when all is said and done, you can't have too many machine tools, so my advice would be keep what you have and buy a Bridgeport as well.

Regards,

Andrew

Edited By Andrew Johnston on 22/04/2012 16:42:02

I don’t know what you want to build but I cannot think of anything in model engineering a BP won’t tackle. As to its rigidity again it will keep going long after I have chickened out of the feed, depth of cut, or speed decision.

One other clone to consider is the TOS machine FNK25 I would get the suffix A machine with power and rapid feeds on all axis. Only drawback is the belt change head.

Jim

That may well be true, but a significant proportion of what I make in the workshop has nothing to do with model engineering. I have managed to stall my Bridgeport by being over-ambitious; now if I think I might be near the power limits I do a quick 'power required' calculation before switching on.

There was a thread on this forum recently where, as I recall, some people reckoned that a Bridgeport would lose tram under some cutting loads, and thus it was always worth checking tram if it was important.

By the way, how are you getting on with your Tormach?

Regards,

Andrew

PS: I'm not planning to change my Bridgeport any time soon, if only because I'd have to move a power guillotine and CNC mill to get the Bridgeport out of the garage.

Bridgeports are not very rigid head wise, I can easily knock mine off tram.

Recently I had to fit a 4" riser block to do certain jobs and took the chance whilst the ram was off to glue 17 stick of hard licorice inside the main casting.

This has improved the rigidity 100 fold.

John S.

Smart as ever John!

K

Whilst I don’t want to become the defender of BP’s I still think that for general model engineering there versatility, capacity and rigidity are more than adequate for the ME game.

As to the Tormach the answer is fair to crap, not the machines fault but mine. But I have a turn round plan and a stack of parts CAMed out and ready to load up.

Might be if I was riving things off on the BP quicker and actually seeing some progress on the loco I might be more inclined to spend the time tinkering with the CNC.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not anti-Bridgeport. I'm pleased with mine, it's probably the machine I use most. It's just that if I was looking now I'd widen the search. Bridgeports do have the advantage of being ubiquitous, so spares are readily available, albeit at a price.

I'm sorry to hear about your travails with the Tormach. It certainly is a steep learning curve. Despite hundreds of parts and many hundreds of hours of machining I'm still making dumb mistakes on mine.

Regards,

Andrew

Edited By Andrew Johnston on 24/04/2012 10:53:12

Thanks for all the comments and advice, very welcome.

Having reviewed my current machine list I don't think that a BP would suit my shop, there is no room and moving out other stuff to accomodate one would be really hard;-

Raglan Loughborough, Opus filing machine, Raglan vertical mill, Bench die filer, Clarkson Mk 2, Willow bandsaw, RJH linisher, Dormer drill grinder, RJH Ferret hone, RJH pedestal grinder, Herbert Junior surface grinder, Benchmaster power hacksaw, Kerry pillar drill, Meddings high speed drill, Raglan 5", Elliot 10 shaper, Tom Seniot M1 mill.

Am I being greedy or just incredibly well equipped? I can't seem to gather the heart to dospose of any of my babies even for the power house of a Bridgeport. There are two more machines under tarps waiting for summer to come so I can renovate them, (what I will do with a slotter is another matter).

I only do light work anyway and won't be building any traction engines etc. I want to copy each of my machines in miniature but that may take some time.

Let me know what you think, T