Trickymissfit
Well-Known Member
Guess I lucked out, both my mills are short table and refitted with ball screws and both have Kurt power drawbars. My take on a bridgeport is it's not a hogging machine and never was. They aren't rigid enough. If I want to hog, I have a Cincinatti horizontal mill. I'd have a K&T but they are too cumbersome. The Cincinatti is bad enough.
I'm careful with my slideways, they get oiled every morning with way oil in the one shot which works by the way and yes, the saddle drips oil but it's a mill, not a vase of flowers. The spindle oil cups are filled every morning too and both machines are step pulley. When one of my employees start a mill, I want to see an oil line across his shop apron.
I also have a Hass with conversational programming and Cat40 with through the spindle coolant. It runs primarily aluminum.
My favorite is my LeBlond Servo shift engine lathe. Always wanted a Monarch 10EE but I don't have time to rebuild one. Time consuming enough rebuilding old South Bend lathes and shapers. My last one took 3 years. The LeBlond line bored the spindle bearings on the last South Bend after I repoured them.
I'm just getting ready to purchase a 3 axis CNC Plasma table. I spend a bundle having parts cut. Besides, I want a new toy to play with and the bank says ok.
I'm really too old to be fooling with stuff that one, don't make money and two, take so much time because in the end, it ain't worth the time spent.... but I'm too stupid to retire I guess....
Yes, my toolroom grinder is on turcite ball ways.
surprisingly for the size of the ways on that Le Blond, they seem to cut very well! I've rebuilt two of them, and when I retired we were looking at doing the first one again. (we used them 16 hours a day seven days a week). Spindle line is very good and typical Le Blond in being over built. Cross slides are prone to wear, and the best fix is a major slide revision with hard steel wear plates. The tailstock is the weak point with them, and not a lot can be done to beef them up. (the quill is too small for the typical loads they are put thru). We usually had to rebuild the apron every 30 months at best, and the half nuts seemed to wear a little more than I'd have thought. If you don't have any spare parts for them, I'd be laying my hands on the plastic servo shift gears & racks located just under the top head stock plate. I suspect they'll be hard to come by in a couple years. All in all they are a nice lathe. You should check the level every six months with them, and their bed seems to flex a bit. I had the two we used setup with lag bolts as well as leveling screws and half inch 6" square plates. They're not a Monarch for sure, but an often overlooked piece of equipment.
The best place to find a good Monarch Double E is from the government auctions. Be sure it has the solid state drives, as the parts for the older tubed drives are near impossible to come by. I rebuilt three or four, and one was tubed. They replaced the drives with a Eurodrive (brand name), and it lacked the horse power needed. Cuts were limited to about .025", but the machine would work at less than .0005" all day long! You can get the ways reground at Viking Engineering up in Hammond Indiana (these guys are the best I've ever seen anywhere). A Monarch EE is still regareded as the most accurate lathe ever produced in any format, but I'd have to put a Hardingh right in that same class. The Hardingh slant bed CNC lathes are simply amazing as well, and usually come in cheaper than an Okuma. Also far better built and more accurate.
If you can't get a deal on the plasma cutter, you also might want to look at a water jet. Heads are a pain in the butt, but are very accurate.
Have not been around a Cinn horizontal mill in eons! I scraped two or three back in the 1970's, and got into the hydraulic nightmare in the knee (a couple idiots had made some repairs in there). I'd rather rebuild the knee on a K&T anytime before working a day on the CINN. The deal with machine centers most folks don't grasp is frame integrity. Look for the older ones with cast iron frames and removable ways. I did a whole series of Monarchs (horizontals) and Burgmasters back in the 1980's. The Monarch is slightly more accurate, but seems to go thru bearing sets twice as fast as I'd have expected. Their bearing setup is extremely accurate, and better than 90% out there right now. The Burmaster (I like the 325 horizontal best) is very similar in design to the old K&T MM series machine centers. Frame is very ridgid, but ball screws are a little small for their load. The spindle orient system they use is a problem, and I eleminated it with an encoder drive similar to what some others used. They had an optional jet pulse coolant system that really worked well, plus the usual external flood system. Most used an M&M table for "B" axis, but they did offer a built in rotary table that is a close copy to Monarch's. You can build a very accurate machine out of an old Burgmaster without spending a third as much for something new that will not be as good. The ones to avoid are the Mori Seikis and Okumas! Makinos are better, but a G&L MM series will flat smoke it seven days a week! (G&L bought K&T back in the 1980's) Avoid the G&L Ram 630 at all costs! It's super fast and fairly accurate, but down time is a nightmare. Another good one to watch for the an Older K&T MM 600. It's similar in design to the bigger MM800, but actually easy to rebuild.
gary
