I bought a surface grinder

Discussion about building and equipping the workshop
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Scott Cee AKA 2drx4
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I bought a surface grinder

Post by Scott Cee AKA 2drx4 »

I was drinking.
20220102_222924.jpg
Anyway, it's a Bridgeport 8x15. It's old, pretty worn out, 3 phase, and weighs 1200lbs. So definitely was a totally intelligent purchase/score of a lifetime.

I pulled it apart and it *probably* works. I cleaned maybe 30lbs of old grinding slag and hardened oil/grease off it, and out of the ways. The mag chuck was seized and didn't want to come apart, but I managed to get it moving by filling it with oil and working it with a tapometer. The spindle threads were boogered, but easy to fix with a file, and luckily a D44 spindle nut socket fit it because I had to impact it off. :lmao: It did come with three grinding wheels, one was brand new.

Also I ordered a super shit VFD of Scamazon, so once that gets here we can see if it even spins.

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Re: I bought a surface grinder

Post by arse_sidewards »

Your mistake was not buying one big enough to do the custom oil pan on your Mercedes diesel abortion. :flipoff:

You're gonna love using it for all sorts of "clean up" work. It takes some thinking to get "yeah that'll seal pressure" quality surface finish on a mill. But if you give a grinder a flat enough surface to start with a grinder will output a high quality surface with no effort other than turning dials.

(obviously it takes some actual thinking if you want to use an old clapped out grinder for toolroom work)

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Re: I bought a surface grinder

Post by Scott Cee AKA 2drx4 »

I'm actually really curious to see what it can still do. The story, as I understand it, was it came out of one of the mills near here that closed. So it likely was a working machine that just got passed around or stored somewhere because it's 3 phase, and nobody has 3 phase.

We'll see... Everything from Amazon seems to be super delayed recently so no idea when the VFD will show up. I should probably track down some wire and a plug in the meantime.

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Re: I bought a surface grinder

Post by HMF »

I was wondering who bought that

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Re: I bought a surface grinder

Post by pointsnorth »

I have found Amazons shipping times to be way off lately. Most stuff is showing up almost two weeks ahead of their estimated arrival times. That’s if it’s already in North America. China is another story


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Re: I bought a surface grinder

Post by Scott Cee AKA 2drx4 »

HMF wrote: Mon Jan 10, 2022 7:54 pm I was wondering who bought that
I thought it was way smaller.

I was sure surprised when I went to pick it up. :lmao:

Probably part of the reason nobody else bit on it.

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Re: I bought a surface grinder

Post by arse_sidewards »

Been a year. Any update?

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Re: I bought a surface grinder

Post by Scott Cee AKA 2drx4 »

I wound up passing it on to some guy that makes knives, or I think thats what he does.

I got it spinning and did grind some bits to see if it worked, and it did, but it's a fully manual machine and an awkward size. If it was smaller I'd have kept it, but honestly I didn't have the space to dedicate to it, and at the same time it wasn't large enough for if you wanted to do something really ambitious with it.

So, very anticlimactic.

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