New Tool Day: *HEAVILY* tricked out Mori MS850

[Alberic]

HI guys,

I happened to run into the guy who bought the Bridgeport this afternoon.
He's 230#, and says the chair works just fine for him. Damned convenient, apparently.
He was on and off of it while tramming the vise, with a tenths indicator, and didn't see any movement either on, or off of it.

His comment when I asked him about it was that it was so handy to use that he'd forgotten that he'd been sitting on it when tramming the vise.
From what he said, you can reach both handles easily, and it swings around nicely under load. So he's keeping it, and perfectly happy with it.

It may not be to everybody's taste, but I thought it was an idea worth sharing. God knows I've seen my share of things that I wondered 'why????' about, but I'm not going to slight the guy who did them for his own use just for doing them, even if *I* don't have a use for them. Takes all kinds, no?

Regards,
Brian

 

[Mr Bridgeport]

There was a commercial version of that chair years ago I remember seeing in a tool catalog. Only ever saw 1 in all the years of working on Bridgeports.
The attachment point is all the way down at the base of the pillar, doesn't have hardly any leverage on it. Pillar is attached with two grade 8 cap crews, even with the leverage of an average sized man your not going to take them anywhere near the yield point. Do the math.
I could see it for those small tedious parts where your at it for hours on end. For normal work I'd have it swung back as far as it would go, it would just get in my way.

Mr Bridgeport.

 

[Alberic]

There was a commercial version of that chair years ago I remember seeing in a tool catalog. Only ever saw 1 in all the years of working on Bridgeports.
The attachment point is all the way down at the base of the pillar, doesn't have hardly any leverage on it. Pillar is attached with two grade 8 cap crews, even with the leverage of an average sized man your not going to take them anywhere near the yield point. Do the math.
I could see it for those small tedious parts where your at it for hours on end. For normal work I'd have it swung back as far as it would go, it would just get in my way.

Mr Bridgeport.

In all the sturm und drang about the chair, I think we're all forgetting something: The knee jacking screw isn't the only thing holding the knee in place. All it does is hold the knee *up*. It doesn't provide X/Y location for the knee assembly at all. That comes off of the dovetails the knee rides on, which have ?what? a foot of contact per side? So what if the screw deflects a thou or two?
I've never taken that part of a bridgeport apart, but some of the similar machines I have seen just have a blunt end on the screw, up against a thrust bearing, with a fairly loose fit in a socket. If those screws deflected .010" it wouldn't make a difference.
Bridgeports may be tighter than that, but the point holds: deflecting the screw doesn't make a difference to the XY of the table, especially if you're not trying to move Z while deflected.

Anyway, that's it for me on this one. I'm one of the ones looking at his work in person. You've heard from me, and several others. The quality of that work compels us to respect him. I figured I'd share. What you do with this knowledge from here is up to you.

-Brian

 

[kustomizingkid]

HI guys,

I happened to run into the guy who bought the Bridgeport this afternoon.
He's 230#, and says the chair works just fine for him. Damned convenient, apparently.
He was on and off of it while tramming the vise, with a tenths indicator, and didn't see any movement either on, or off of it.

His comment when I asked him about it was that it was so handy to use that he'd forgotten that he'd been sitting on it when tramming the vise.
From what he said, you can reach both handles easily, and it swings around nicely under load. So he's keeping it, and perfectly happy with it.

It may not be to everybody's taste, but I thought it was an idea worth sharing. God knows I've seen my share of things that I wondered 'why????' about, but I'm not going to slight the guy who did them for his own use just for doing them, even if *I* don't have a use for them. Takes all kinds, no?

Regards,
Brian

Don't come here and let your facts and data get in the way of emotion.

 

[Cyclotronguy]

1/2" is kinda skimpy, don'tcha think ?

To funny!

One of my first engineering tasks as a young student was to build an aluminum support to hold and align a 4 pole magnet that clocked in at several hundred kg. When it was done the engineer in charge, a cranky old world German had me stack roughly 3x the target weight on top in the form of lead bricks and then stand on top of the stack.

When it looked like I had my balance he gave the assyembly a heafy kick and said "Ya didn't flinch, boy; confidence or arrogance?"

20 years later that stand was still holding the same magnet, still steering a proton beam.

It's good to be able to crunch the numbers confidently, but some days overkill is just fine, too.

 

[Doozer]

I learned on lathes with no dro's. I've used lathes with dro's and trav-a-dials...I prefer a dro, I am proficient without, I am efficient with.

DROs for accuracy.
Travel Indicators for ease of use.
I say it is handy to have BOTH on a lathe.

I have a 2" travel indicator on a long rod
mounted to the headstock of a few of my lathes
to monitor/measure carriage travel when approaching
the headstock. I find it covers 90% of what I need
when turning features in a part. And in reality,
this setup really only needs a 1" travel dial indicator
to do most of what I need.
At work where I might use one or another of a few lathes
that we have in the model shop, just having a 1" travel
indicator on a magnet base so you can stick it to the
front bed way is super handy. Was threading on the
big LaBlond the other day, cutting circular profile threads
to screw into an extension spring so it could be used in
torsion. Very handy to watch the needle to pull put the
half nuts at the right time.

--D

 

[ezduzit]

On my old Logan I had interchangeable 2" and 4"-travel dial indicators.