03-17-2015, 01:55 PM
I was thinking about this taking the knee off thing to get those brass shoes in there.
Back for the short time I had worked for a machine tool company that did some rebuilding, they did scrape and reassemble Bridgeport machines. When they reassembled a machine, the very first two parts that went together were the knee to the base. When they did that, the base was "lying on its back" and they spread liberal amounts of way lube and then slide the knee casting onto the base's dovetails. Once on, they inserted the gib and would do the final scraping and adjustment of the gib to assure a smooth sliding fit, no play.
Only when those three pieces, base, knee and gib (with gib tension screws adjusted) were fully assembled did they then add the knee elevation screw and nut assembly and the gearing. Then they would stand the machine up, add the saddle, adjust that and so on. They did this so they would always know that the mating slides actually slid together without any slop.
I don't expect you to go through all that trouble, just an FYI of my limited experience.
Back for the short time I had worked for a machine tool company that did some rebuilding, they did scrape and reassemble Bridgeport machines. When they reassembled a machine, the very first two parts that went together were the knee to the base. When they did that, the base was "lying on its back" and they spread liberal amounts of way lube and then slide the knee casting onto the base's dovetails. Once on, they inserted the gib and would do the final scraping and adjustment of the gib to assure a smooth sliding fit, no play.
Only when those three pieces, base, knee and gib (with gib tension screws adjusted) were fully assembled did they then add the knee elevation screw and nut assembly and the gearing. Then they would stand the machine up, add the saddle, adjust that and so on. They did this so they would always know that the mating slides actually slid together without any slop.
I don't expect you to go through all that trouble, just an FYI of my limited experience.