Cool projects to do on a mill?

Long story short I recently acquired a Bridgeport mill free of charge... I however currently have little idea how to run it or what I could do with it... Has anyone done anything cool or note worthy with a manual mill? (If this isn't the right section for this please move)

Jake

 

ship it to 37137?

I'd say start on you tube and do some simple operations to learn the machine first.. Get yourself a good machinists book to learn Feed/speed vs material and cutters etc..

 

Oh yeah, and setup.. That's another one that can leave a lot of people baffled as far as holding the workpiece to the table and getting it leveled and indicated properly and such..

 

And just so you know, you usually end up spending as much for tooling as you would normally pay for the mill. The first thing I would do is check for runout on the quill and ways. Maybe just me, but free machine tools usually come with a lot of unwanted baggage and that can get expensive.

 

Oh John, You are so right...........in most cases the tooling and consumables far exceed the cost of a "Good Tight" used mill. And I do stress Good & Tight cause if it is not the ability for it to function properly is already severely compromised.
Vises, fixtures to hold and level things , dial indicators to tram the head to the table, end mills that can cost from $35-$100 each. Specialty drills and reamers.......and the list goes on , what you see here is a mere fraction of all that supports this mill............not to say everyone needs to have a mill to be this completely tooled.....but if your going to tackle about any job this is what is near required.

Don't want to discourage your gift............but just want to point out there is allot more to making that machine do what it is designed to do than just the machine.

 

Tarry, that's a very sweet setup!

 

Great to hear you got a mill.
As far as tooling you don't need to buy a lot of tooling to start with.
A decent vise, drill chuck, set of collets, drill bit set with a few center drills, a fly cutter and a couple of end mills. To tram the mill buy an Indicol and a test indicator, they will be needed for locating anyway. With these few tools you can build tons of things.
Don't get me wrong tools are great but learning to build other tools you use will be good practice and save 1000's of dollars. In my years of being a tool & moldmaker I have built all my parallels, 1-2-3 blocks, grinding vises, sine bars, sine plates, angle blocks, angle plates, nearly all my fixturing I have built. Best advice I can give is to join the hobby machinist and home shop machinist forum and start askjng questions. You might also get a subscription to the homeshop machinist magazine.
If you need help just give me a shout.

 

Two things come to mind right now, Our mills at work have no free time until the end of summer as of now...two guys are looking for exhaust OEM manifolds. My second suggestions is all the guys who are wanting roll cages and HAVE TO HAVE dies to hold the angles when they bend the tubes. Add on thought, guys need drive train gears recut too,

 

Congrats on the score! As mentioned, the tooling will get expensive.

Another idea for instruction: find a community college machine tool tech course. Back(way back ) when I was in school, there were a number of old dudes in the classes there to learn or just to use the machines for hobby stuff. One guy took the course several times just to machine parts for a model train he had been working on for years.

 

Congratulations! I've got a 1963 Bridgeport http://youtu.be/xlDYsosAMPk

 

please read the amended statements....

We took 3/16 in plate steel and relief cut the company logo into it as a license plate. Other plates were turned into stencils for spray painting our product boxes.
Tools I did not see,
1. You must get a real good quality torque wrench so you do NOT have something fly off the table and into the wall outside of the garage area. Too much set MAY wear out the table.
2. Safety glasses or covers and a real serious face shield, gloves and an apron. You said you were inexperienced, metal chips burn and enter the skin quicker that we can blink.
3. In the last photo is a round chuck with square tool locking screws, under the blue vise, that is the size of the torque wrench drive size, i.e. 1/2 or 3/4 inch that you need.
4. NOT a coolant capable machine, oil AND cutting oil too.
5. THE MACHINISTS' reference MANUAL is probably in the 73 edition by now. Expensive and mandatory.
Hope that helps.


I want to clarify the gloves are for SETTING parts ONLY!!!
Steel gets hot and sharp after machining.

NEVER RUN ROTATING MACHINES WITH GLOVES ON, EVER!
NEVER RUN ROTATING MACHINES WITH GLOVES ON , EVER!

The original poster has a fine machine that can BE SET UP TO DO anything.
Just saying, my engineer and I valued your GIFT (in the photos)at a reasonable GUESS of $10,000 dollars US.

Safety USING THAT STYLE OF MACHINE for someone new to machining is PARAMOUNT.

I DO FULLY UNDERSTAND THE REPLYS OF "FOUL'', I am a bad guy to you for typing that word GLOVES(without further explanation), an unsafe condition COULD be possible.
I would never willingly allow an injury to happen to another person.

 

Oh and for good projects? How about an 80% AR lower..

 

You do not need a torque wrench to tighten fixturing, do not and I repeat do not wear gloves to run a machine, very good way to loose a hand or worse. You get caught running machinery in a real shop with gloves your gonna be in for some serious crap from a good boss.

For a better project try a 0% ar15 lower, takes about 10 hours or so with the right tools.

 

Leveling a piece of heavy machinery is always a good project.

Adapter plates are kinda fun to make. Dove tail cuts are nifty too.

 

X2
life and limb is at stake
we only wear gloves for handling raw edge sheet metal.

 

Schooling, training WAY smart.

 

congrats on getting a new garage tool . I have access to a machine shop at work . and they make anything I might need for work or home projects . whether its done on a manual or CNC . brother is retired nuclear machinist and has a mill and lathe in his garage , he makes motorcycle and Volkswagen stuff . when he not in fla