Bridgeport siting

I'm in the processof rearanging my workshop. Currently the bridgeport is in the middle of a wall. Is it more efficient to have it in a corner?

Many thanks

David

Hi David I have mine sited in a corner @45 deg,s which is great for normal use but you will always have a job turn up that that is too long ( hits the wall )

Paul

I have my Bridgeport canter-wise across a corner with a secondary exit door specifically placed to allow long jobs to project outside. Sort of thing you can do when scratch building. I went for an angle closer to 30° than 45° as it seemed tome that it made more efficient use of space in my situation. Pillar drill, Pollard 15AY so quite big, sits alongside.

Disadvantage of the canter-wise across the corner position is that it effectively blocks off quite a lot of alongside the wall storage space as its so difficult to squeeze past the table without lots of cranking. I've used some of the space for "once in a blue moon" stuff but 20/20 hindsight says I should have built some cupboards on castors with floor guides for easy pull out. Building a bigger shop and carefully planning beforehand ensures you have plenty of room for the stuff you had then. Six years down the line it all looks a bit different! Workshop stuff makes rabbits look downright lazy.

I have seen a Bridgeport placed canter-wise but away from the corner which seemed to work better from the storage access point of view than hard into the corner. Memory says a pair of four drawer filing cabinets (with lift out trays) filling out the corner so to speak but I may be transferring my affection for filing cabinets as workshop storage onto something of similar size.

Clive

I span the larger mill at work around 45 degrees so that it fitted into a corner, and strangely enough it increased the access on one side of it. But this was in large part due to me also pulling it out from the corner by about a foot, which means that we can stack things like cans of oil, etc behind it and also this leaves room for lubrication point access, etc.

Was it worth it? Well, I think it was, and nobody else has suggested putting it back, so it's staying there! We don't ever get jobs that are too large for it, and if we really wanted to we could open a large pull-down shutter to give us more room on one side if we were desperate. Is it a more efficient use of the space? Well, we've got more stuff in the space it previously occupied than we could fit around it before, so I'd say yes. But whether that works for you is another matter. Before I carried out this exercise, I drew up a scale floor plan and 'tested' it - that may be worth trying in your situation too.

I've got rather a soft spot for Bridgeports.

Romney Marsh.............................

Sorry John, you've been beaten to it. Romney Marsh has already been allocated as a nuclear waste dump......it was on the BBC recently, so it must be true.

I started off with my Bridgeport in a corner, but it soon got moved as I acquired more scrap iron; sorry valuable second user machine tools! It now sits along a wall, but canted about 20° from perpendicular. One problem having it in a corner, apart from workpiece length, is having the room to swing the ram, if you have heads on both ends. At each stage of my workshop planning I tried various locations using cut outs of the machine tools (reflecting maximum table travels) and a plan of the workshop on graph paper. Much quicker than moving the machines only to find they won't fit; although it does keep one fit, even if the machines don't.

Regards,

Andrew