[PROJECT] New to me "Ferro" Bridgeport clone mill.

[johnnyc14]

I am going to chronicle this project in stages as time permits.

I had been looking for a bigger milling machine than my current PM932PDF and finally ran across a “Ferro” branded Taiwanese Bridgeport clone locally. I borrowed and tilt deck car trailer on just about the coldest day of winter and brought it home with the help of my friend Darcy. It was a challenge getting this 2500 lb machine loaded and unloaded but we got it done. This is the only picture I took that day, I just plain forgot to take any others as I was stressed and cold.



 

 
It was in a pretty neglected state so a complete teardown of the table, cross-slide and knee was required. There was no crank handle for the knee so I made up this 9 spline adapter that can be turned with a 15/16” wrench or a ½” square drive on a drill.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
I wanted it to be easily moveable so I welded up a base using 2” square tubing with ¼” wall. I welded ¾” nuts on the corners to mount wheels.
 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 
I made it in 2 pieces to make it easy to install without having to remove the wood blocks the machine was sitting on. I used 9/16” threaded rod to bolt the machine to the base. I had to make some tapered spacers to match the angle of the rounded top of the machine’s bolt holes.
 

 

 

 

 
I tried using the same wheels I use to move my lathe and the PM932 mill but they proved to be not strong enough, the bearing outer races split due to the weight of the machine. It weighs about twice as much as the other machines. Even after I machined some steel tires to protect the outer races. I came up with a solution for this which I will detail later. The ball bearing wheels lasted long enough to get it into a good working position.
 

 

 
I noticed that the head was a little noisy and the problem turned out to be the upper bearing was failed. That was easy and cheap to replace.
 

 
Since the motor is 3 phase I bought a cheap Chinese Hyanyang VFD to convert the 240 volt single phase power in my garage to 220 volt 3 phase. I completely gutted the electrical box on the machine and went to work using the crappy instructions that came with the VFD as well as a lot of research done on the internet.
 

 
I mounted the existing electrical box on a swing arm and re-enforced the bottom sheet metal with a piece of ¼” by 2” steel.
 
 

 
I removed the digital display from the VFD and mounted it in the door of the box and used 2 latching switches, 1 momentary switch and a 10,000 ohm linear potentiometer to provide the functions I wanted. It has 1 switch for ON/OFF, another for FORWARD/REVERSE the momentary switch is for JOG and the pot is for the variable speed. I kept the maximum frequency for the motor to 60HZ as the mill has a variable speed head. It wound up looking like this when I was done with it and it works great.
 

 

 
Figuring out all the VFD settings was a challenge and I can post them here if anyone is interested.
 
Next I moved on to the table, cross-slide and knee. I used my engine crane to remove these heavy parts and found that the bevel drive to lift the knee was completely full of chips. I still can’t believe it worked like this, and pretty smoothly too!




 
Here are some pics of the process I used to remove the knee.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
I used engine shampoo and a pressure washer to clean out all the mess inside the knee.
 

 
All the parts were in good shape with only cleaning and new bearings for the bevel drive shaft required. I cleaned out and re-used the bearing on top of the knee jack and installed a plexiglass shield to keep the chip off the bevel drive area in the future. I reinstalled the knee and adjusted the gib. I used lots of high pressure moly-grease on the bevel drive gears.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 


More to come later.