Mobile Base for Bridgeport (Enco) mill

Enclosed are pictures of the mobile base that I built this spring for my Enco Mill that I bought off of E-bay a few years ago. I had just completed the shop a few months previous to this and it was time to get this mill up and going. It had been in storage in the house garage, taking up space and becoming a conversation point with my wife. I have been wanting a full on knee mill since I was in high school. Now it was time to make it happen. Mill weighs right at 2,500 lbs. All my work benches, lathe, and other equipment are built on wheels so I can move things around and configure my shop, at any time, to the job I am working on. Next post will be of the installation of the VFD to drive the 3 phase motor.

Looking good. I want to learn how to operate a lathe and a mill. I feel the learning curve would be very steep.

If you haven't used a mill with a VFD before you'll really like it. I've been using a mill for years but got to try one with a VFD this past week. Mine will be getting one shortly.

Nice base. I like the screw down feet to keep it in place.

Fascinating. I wouldn't have thought a 2,500 pound machine was moveable.

Why not Sam? A 6000 lb truck is moveable. I like the base. Is there any flex between the horizontal channel the wheels are mounted to and the vertical piece of channel it's welded to? Being that I overbuild everything, I would put a gusset at each wheel. Are you working from home or purely hobby? What kind of hobby? I would love to have a mill and lathe one day, I keep finding odds and ends that would be nice to have a lathe or a mill for. But I need some really good reasons to justify to the wife!

930dreamer said:

Looking good. I want to learn how to operate a lathe and a mill. I feel the learning curve would be very steep.

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If you are mechanically inclined, and understand basic science you will find that with some experience and time on lathes and mills to can get the basics covered. Becoming a machinist is more of an art than I could master (I flipped to the design option), but I turned out a few nice (and handy) little projects when I was at school.

Like you, I am curious and would like to get back into it...especially if there was no old curmudgeon standing over my shoulder rattling off comments about "mr. Outlander's surface finish" , or the dude next to me not tightening his chuck properly and his workpiece turning into a projectile


To Bigguns69 - nice set up. Every growing boy (and girl) should spend time on a Bridgeport at some point.

looks great! That's a good test on welds!

Simple Sam said:

Fascinating. I wouldn't have thought a 2,500 pound machine was moveable.

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I have had my mill on a mobile base for about 12 or so years at this point with no problems.
A mill is tolerant of this due to the design of the base and how the moving componets attach and operate.
A large lathe that uses the bed as the backbone of the machine would not handle it as well unless the mobile base was built very rigid to avoid imparting twist onto the bed due to uneven loading from an uneven floor

Bob

Bonus to be able to have a mobile mill around, you **** just like rsanter. He has a nice mobile setup also.

Nice!!!!! Beats a cherry picker for short distances which I was using !!!! That will eventually be on my to do list. Your design is much better then I was envisioning. But welder is still on my wish list not own list.

I just fart around building stuff for myself and fixing farm equipment for my Dad. I learned how to stick weld when I was 13, and played around in my high school machine shop for 4 years, playing with mills, lathes, aluminum castings and then went on to get a mechanical engineering degree. Always thought about opening my own engineering/fabrication shop but I get paid too much, being an engineer for others, to jump out on my own after 20 years and take the risk, I think?? Back to the mobile base, there was a light deflection of the cross channel of about 16th. of an inch in the center, which I expected, but when you bolt the base to the mill, the mill becomes part of the structure at that point. Each wheel only has about 650 to 700 lbs. of weight on them so the cantilever load induced into the channel and weld joint is actually pretty small and then the main tubes are 2x5x3/16 thk. rect tube that I had laying around.

I started looking at the pictures thinking, "man when I moved my full size mill into the garage it was a little difficult I couldn't imagine getting it on top of the mobile base..." Oh you have a full size tractor with a loader, isn't that cheating? ;-)

BTW: If you don't happen to have that equipment, I recommend a pallet jack and "drop deck" trailer [Check out Bill-Jax or JLG "Triple L"]. The trailer bed drops all the way to the ground, pull the machine on with the jack, repeat in reverse at the opposite end.

I have seen several people that put mills, brakes, shears and anything else with a similar footprint on pallets and then move them as needed with a palled jack or fork lift. I have even seen where they put them up on the pallet rack out of the way when not in use

Bob

I have moved a Bridgeport a couple of times with just three tools: a big prybar, a fulcrum (2x4 or steel), and a half dozen pieces of pipe long enough to span the base. Pry one end of the base up enough to get a pipe under it, move to the other end and repeat. Space pipe under the base. As you move, pipes will roll out from under the base, so just move them forward and roll over them again. You can change directions gradually using the prybar and fulcrum.

Just like building the Pyramids!

BTW, very nice mobile base! Do you put discs on the floor to spread out the pressure on the levelling screws? I do that with my smaller machines.

Provincial said:

I have moved a Bridgeport a couple of times with just three tools: a big prybar, a fulcrum (2x4 or steel), and a half dozen pieces of pipe long enough to span the base. Pry one end of the base up enough to get a pipe under it, move to the other end and repeat. Space pipe under the base. As you move, pipes will roll out from under the base, so just move them forward and roll over them again. You can change directions gradually using the prybar and fulcrum.

Just like building the Pyramids!

BTW, very nice mobile base! Do you put discs on the floor to spread out the pressure on the levelling screws? I do that with my smaller machines.

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I have an easier way to move equipment. I used to use the pry bar and pipe method. Now I lift the machine onto blocks ( with pry bar) then put 3 floor jacks under it and use them like scates. I have moved several machines this way and it is much easier.

Bob

Looks awesome! I love the idea of making the knee mill portable. I want to eventually move mine out so I can disassemble & a paint the mill and also epoxy the floors. Your project is JUST what I needed to see! Thanks for sharing!

You're gonna love the VFD! I just put a TECO vfd on my 1949 Bridgy M head. After decoding the Chi-wanese manual, it was pretty painless. I used the original Cutler-Hammer drum switch for the REV-OFF-FWD control. I picked up a used Hoffman aluminum enclosure off eBay, 20 ft of CAT5 cable at my local Lowe's and a 10K Ohm linear potentiometer, control knob, and project box at my local Radio Shack and had the "remote" controls working in about an hour. The biggest majority of that time was figuring out how to program & wire the vfd itself.

Let me know if I can help with the VFD. The variable speed feature is worth the cost of the VFD alone. Another cool thing is since the M head doesn't have a way to manually "brake" the spindle when power is cut like the J head does, I used the VFD's ability to DECEL at a programmed rate so I can have some semblance of a braking feature when I cut the power. It's set to stop to 0 rev's in .75 seconds currently. Also, since my Bridgy is the older 1/2 HP model, I am actually running it on 120VAC. I want to eventually upgrade to a J head so selling it in the future is NOT gonna be a problem. Already had more than a couple of my buddies come by the shop and asked me to sell it simply based on the fact that they can roll it in to their shop, plug it in any 15 amp 120VAC outlet and start making chips.

Here's a couple vids ...

1st one is initial power-up with no remote controls. Using the VFD for all controls.


2nd one is showing the drum switch & potentiometer for variable speed

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Cool old piece of machinery. Thanks for sharing the vids.

jhn9840
John

I like the wheels, probably would have used a pallet just for speed but wheels eliminate finding the pallet jack. At any rate portable is good, when I envisioned my shop I had figured for more built in place than I ended up with at first it was a temp thing but all my stuff is on wheels or pallet jack. Lots of peiece the changes were small, an angle, move shelf etc. I do make changes on occasion, after while they become a bit less but still have one or 2 to do.

Very nice build.

Nice mobile base. I would suggest putting flat pucks of steel under the leveling screws. Otherwise the point of the screw can "drill" a hole in the concrete due to overtaxing its compressive strength.