Bridgeport Mobile Base

My dad is giving me a Wells-Index 745 vertical mill for my garage. My wife, two dogs and I live in a small condominium in Cleveland Heights with an attached 1 car + garage. Hopefully this will not be our last house, so one day I am going to have to move this mill.

So I decided to build a mobile base. I started by just google'ing, "bridgeport mobile base and bridgeport dolly." I was able to find a great picture of what exactly I wanted. Here is the link, it is post #13 about half way down the screen: http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/general/rolling-stand-bridgeport-234964/.

I sent the guy who built the base a PM, but he did not get back to me until after I had constructed the base. In his build he used 1/2" 3 inch angle iron, and then 1/2" plate for the 1000lb casters.

My base is 3.5x3x1/4" inch angle iron and then 1/4 plate for the caster holders. My casters are 750lb each from use-enco.com. I also had my welder weld on 0.750 nuts to be utilized for the leveling screws.

My dad has a J-head bridgeport in his garage and as a thank you for giving me this Wells-Index 745 I made him a base as well. Surprisingly, the base dimensions for his Bridgeport and my Index are both 24"x36". I made the two bases one inch bigger in each direction, so 25x37".

I drilled 1/2" holes for the casters and I am using 3/8" 1.5" bolts to mount them to the base. If all goes as planned we are bringing my new (to me) mill home on Saturday.

Here are the pics:













Here is where it is going...don't laugh :huh I still have to do some "re-arrainging" in order to get it to fit...hopefully it does!


The South Bend Heavy 10 that the mill will be complimenting.

Jack,

The Handy lift sure comes in handy for all the projects eh?

Your garage is looking like mine, 10 lbs of shit in a 5 lb bag.

Get some bicycle hooks and hang up some of the wheels that are on the floor.

I think we should have a contest....

This was pre new bike too:huh

Lol

You win...I'm going to show this to my wife to show her "see my garage is not that Bad!"

Looks more like 30 pounds of shit in a 5 pound bag!!! I give the OP an "A" for effort!!! GH

At least the OP has an onobstructed path to walk on. Unlike the other guy here. :eek1 :huh

Nice work!!!!!!



Sailah - clean your garage!!!

More painting...two coats on the top, 1 thick coat on the bottom. I am using Sherwin Williams slate grey paint...I think that it is slate gray???





Here are some more pics of my garage...my wife thinks that we should get rid of the kegerator to make room for the "mill that we do not need." I told her that she is crazy, and if need be the kegerator will come inside and live in the study.







There is a KZ400 hardtailed frame behind the 90% completed lathe...that is next up on the project list!

Nice work!

Well since I only have had 7 replies to this thread...I hope nobody but the repliers here get to learn anything from moving the mill today.

My dad and I rented a $34 5x9 foot U-haul trailer with a ramp. It was a good thing that we had my dad's truck, because the u-haul people check to make sure that the tail-lights and brake lights work...which do not with my truck beucase I have not hooked up the trailer light cable yet.

Loading the Wells-Index mill was no big deal, we had a tow-motor so we just picked it up, dropped it in the mobile base and then picked it up again and dropped it in the trailer, no big deal. It was a good thing that I made the mobile base 1 inch bigger in length and width, the front and back of the base kind of bow out a small ammount and this 1 inch made up for that pretty much perfectly.

I used 4 smaller ratchet straps to hold this thing down and the ride was no big deal. Un-loading the mill was a learning experience. We used a stap to tie the base of the mill to a pine tree, then we used a come-a-long to tie the base of the mill to the front of the trailer with about a foot of slack, the tree tie had no slack. My dad would pull the truck forward about a foot, take up the slack in the come-along, the mill would be pulled off the trailer a small ammount because it was tied to the tree and then we would let out another foot with the come-a-long. We did this until the mill was off the truck, then we just muscled it into the garage, after I removed the lift, motorcycle, vacume, hose reel, chair, seat, etc...The garage is packed now, hopefully I will be able to arrange it better.

Here are the pics and one video of getting the mill off the trailer.

Enjoy...

What does the finished product look like, now that four months have gone by?

I will take some pictures today when I go home. It looks good...I guess. I removed all the power feeds on the Index, and next I am replacing all of the Bjur one shot lube system, and finally de-greasing all the oil, grease, and nicotine that is all over this thing. I swear, from working in my Dad's machine shop for all those years, you have to be an alcoholic and smoke 3 packs of cigarettes a day in order to be a machinist.

I also picked up a Delta 28-303 14" bandsaw that I had apart to fix the "love-joy" clutch mechanism that was broken inside of the gearbox. It looked like somebody hit the clutch with a hammer, shearing off the roll pin that holds one part of the clutch to the shaft. I also made a mobile base for the bandsaw. I will take a pic of that today and post it up here as well.

Next I made a surface plate stand, I have to weld on the base plates for the rolling casters and then paint it, and then the stand will be complete. I am trying to make everything in my garage on wheels, because it is so small mobility is key in order to keep things not so cluttered.

Here is the link to the bandsaw rebuild: http://advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=843867

I also wired up the mill about a month ago. I used a 3 phase phase-a-matic converter 1-3hp. It starts right up and works great. Here is the install thread:
http://advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=840917

And here is the arbor press that I re-painted and cleaned up: http://advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=838930

All I need left is a height gage, and a small surface grinder and I will basically have a home machine shop!!! Ha yeah right!

That bad boy looks STOUT!

Why not just buy a used 2 ton cherry picker for $50? You could pick it off the trailer, you could move the mill or lathe and they come apart easy to pack into the attic.

I thought about that, but I wanted something that I could move this mill around in my garage with. If I needed to clean out around the machine to pull it out of the garage to get at something behind the mill, or where ever, I wanted it to be mobile.

The cherry picker would have been easier and cheaper, but I thought that this was cool and plus, to me at least, a mobile base makes a vertical mill much more valuable if I ever go to sell it. Who knows I may be wrong, but I would be more tempted to buy one of these if it is on wheels as opposed to not on wheels.

Great idea and nice work. I friend did the same thing years ago when he was starting his own mold shop. Everything was in his garage, on dollies, and two rows of 220 v. 3 phase busway were suspended from the ceiling. Worked out OK until he was able to afford commercial property.

Thanks for the inspiration - I've got the same problem.

so how much weight do you have to put on the leveling screws? seems like everything is real beefy except where the nuts are welded on. Do the casters still hold the weight when it's set in a working position?

The engine crane/pickers aren't great for mills, I tried that with mine, I had to assemble the legs to the crane around my mill, then the hook when set on the boom length appropriate for the weight of my mill meant that the ankle of the arm going to the lift eye was so sharp when the arm was high enough to clear the mill, that the arm was going to swing my mill, so I had to use the longer 1 ton hole, which was sketchy in terms of load capacity.

Then once you lift its hard to push with out the mill swinging, so I had to ratchet strap the mill to the body with a block of wood to keep the knee from banging.

Ultimately I just fork lifted it.

I have a 2T picker with extendable legs, it's a little beefier than normal. I bought a 60's Kondia that is about 2ton, so I had to pick off the upper ram to move it. The smaller bridgeports run only about 1600 lbs, so it should work looking at it from my armchair.

I also picked a early 60's MKL lathe that was easily 2T. I had to jack it up and then push it a foot before it blead down, still did the job.

Nice job on the base though. Looks tough.