The Home Machinist!

The Bport owner got the manual for the series 1 machine and it says clearly in it that there is no adjustment for the brake in the J head. One has to disassemble the drive unit to replace the bands. It doesn't mention anything about previous proctology experience, but it appears that it might be use...

My son graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a degree in Computer Engineering. He spent a lot of time and money for that. He has been at MS for 20 years. He can and does do programming as a part of his job, but MS can hire a bazillion (1e^27) programmers from the far and...

Rotating the handle and then pulling to lock was my intuitive solution when the issue came up. We tried that and the brake disengaged. This begs the question, why is there a cam-lock feature on the handle if it releases the brake? As mentioned, the owner is waiting for the operation manual. Hopefull...

This is a J head according to the label and rotating and pulling the handle out does not apply the brake. Only rotating the handle in either direction does. Is something out of adjustment or is this just the way it is? The owner has not gotten the user manual yet, so we are just speculating. --earlgo

Another question: Is this brake supposed to lock the spindle when the handle is pulled 'out' instead of rotated? In this particular one the brake works if the handle is rotated left or right but does not engage when the handle is pulled 'out'. bridgeport brake.jpg ( sorry, I must have sneezed when t...

Steve. maybe you could adapt something like a retractable caster to your frame. https://www.woodcraft.com/products/woodriver-retracting-casters# Scroll down the page and there is a plywood mobile base kit that I used under my table saw. It has 2 fixed wheels and 2 adjustable feet when the wheels are...

A big help would be scraping in the bottom of the carriage using the unworn end of the bed as the place to match.
My old Atlas carriage had a lot of tilt on the operator front left, as mentioned above. Scraping helped a great deal.
Couldn't do much with the .005 wear on the ways, though.
--earlgo

Anyone have a clue what these are selling for? Are e-bay prices to be trusted?
--earlgo

My friend went to an auction and bought a Bridgeport and one of the attachments was this shaper head. I never heard of one and thought you B-Port fans might be interested. BPort Shaper attachment.jpg BPort shaper nameplate.jpg The other attachment was a horizontal mill head. He got a really good pri...

TomB: didn't find any washers as you described. However, the tab lock washer does a similar job but has only 2 tabs.https://www.mcmaster.com/tab-lock-washers

--earlgo

The one I found is reasonably accurate. My older unit doesn't have all the markings mentioned, but it is easy to interpolate. The PDF is 3.4 megs in size so it can't be transferred on this website. Send me a PM with an address and I will send the entire PDF. Not only johnfreese, but anyone else who ...

An alternate suggestion is a Poly-Choke PC-101. Unfortunately they appear to be no longer made, but there is one on listed on e-bay. The asking price is a bit much, but it is e-bay where everything you need is over-priced. https://www.ebay.com/itm/POLY-CHOKE-CO-PC-101-Indexing-Sharpening-Fixture-For...