[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.

[EdK]

Nice write-up John.

This thread will get a lot of attention with all of those pictures you posted.

Ed

[the penguin]

I didn't put wheels under my milling machines, but the both set on a piece of 1/2" steel plate and is on top of a extra heavy duty plastic pallet, so I can move mine if needed, with the pallet jack.

[johnnyc14]

The Y axis lead screw and bronze nuts were completely worn out. I found out later that many Taiwanese mills use this same weird size threaded shaft for the screw. It is 32mm diameter but has 5 TPI acme threads, not the metric trapezoidal thread you would expect on metric sized shaft. The nuts are available for a reasonable price but not the screw. I wound up buying a 3 foot length of 1.25” acme threaded shaft locally and ordering 2 left hand thread nuts from Roton Industries, who were, by the way, great to deal with. The nuts were not the correct dimensions on the OD but were the correct 1.25” left hand acme thread to fit the shaft I bought. Since 32mm = 1.259” this seemed a good way to convert the shaft to a standard size. When the new nuts came I machined them to fit the mill’s feed nut bracket. I then machined the new screw shaft to match the original shaft’s dimensions and milled the keyway slots. I bought new RH thread 32mm nuts for the X axis from Supra Machine Tools on eBay. They were nearly a straight drop in part with only the bolt hole spacing needing to be modified.
 

 

 
This picture shows the newly machined Roton nut, then the nut as it arrived from Roton and the original nut.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

 

 
I polished the threads with 600 grit paper after all the machine work was done.
 







 

 

 

 

 



The cross slide and table move super smoothly with very little backlash and I'm very pleased with how well it turned out.

 
To be continued.
 
John
 

[Mayhem]

Excellent work John and very well documented.

Welcome aboard!

[stevec]

Hi John and welcome to the forum.
I'd love a copy of your translation of the Chinese Hyanyang VFD instructions. I have one that I plan to use so that I can put the original three phase motor back on my TREE mill (it's another of my " get a round toit" projects.).

Steve

[PixMan]

Amazing work, and really good documentation. It brings me back to Darren's project in so many ways. You learned what we should have learned sooner, that you can buy the LH threaded rod in 1.25" for so much less than it takes to make it.

One question though, had you given any consideration to switching over to ballscrews on the X & Y while it was all apart? That could have afforded making it at least a two axis CNC for reasonable cost.

Anyhow, nice machine and you'll really appreciate having the increased mass, power and travel to work with in the future.

[johnnyc14]

(07-05-2015, 06:25 AM)stevec Wrote: Hi John and welcome to the forum.
I'd love a copy of your translation of the Chinese Hyanyang VFD instructions. I have one that I plan to use so that I can put the original three phase motor back on my TREE mill (it's another of my " get a round toit" projects.).

Steve

Thanks Steve, these are the notes I made when setting up the Huanyang VFD. I hope they make sense to someone other than me. I have a PDF of the manual if you need it. I have since received and installed the braking resistor and have my ramp up and ramp down times set at 2 seconds and so far everything is working perfectly.

Huanyang Inverter (VFD)
 
-Model number HY03D023B
-Input 240 Volt single phase
-Rated output 220 Volt 3 phase 4 HP or 3KW 13 Amps (220 volts X 13 Amps = 2860 watts) (1 HP = 746 Watts) (4 X 746 Watts = 2984 Watts)
 
Initial Set-Up
 
-Instructions from vendor (eBay seller “Solar Jean”) suggested the frequency parameters be set in the following order: PD05 set to 60HZ, PD04 set to 60HZ, PD03 set to 60HZ, PD72 to 60HZ. I connected the 240 Volt single phase input power to terminals S and T and the 3 legs of the 3 phase 3 HP motor to terminals U, V, and W. I plugged the VFD in with it temporarily just lying of the table of the mill and it powered up. I set the above parameters as suggested and the Run, Forward and Reverse functions worked from the unit’s built in keypad.
 
Advanced Set-Up
 
-I wanted to use a remote mounted control panel to allow remote function of Run, Forward/Reverse, Jog as well as a Potentiometer controlled variable speed. Since the mill has a variable speed head I see no reason to run the motor at more than the rated 60HZ. Using the supplied manual I then made the following switching, wiring and parameter changes to achieve the functions I wanted. I used the schematic on page 37 as a guide for the 3 wire Run, Forward/Reverse switches and the schematic on page 12 for the wiring of the Potentiometer. Page 36 explains how the output terminals can be re-configured for multiple uses. I drew the following schematic after researching the manual. The information on pages 19-26 of the manual details which parameters and settings support the different functions. Since my custom settings are all basic they are all covered on pages 19-20 except PD72 which was part of the initial setup for 60HZ power. These are the connections and parameter changes I made to make the VFD function as I wanted:
 
See the schematic on the next page, Switch 1 is for D1, Switch 2 is for D2 and Switch 3 is for D3.
-PD01 set to 1 to support use of external input controls.
-PD44 set to 1 to change the function of the “FOR” terminal to D1. When set to 1, D1 is now the Run function.
-PD45 set to 5 to change the function of the “REV” terminal to D2. When set to 5, D2 is now the Forward/Reverse selector. When Switch 2 is open you get forward rotation and when closed you get reverse. See page 37 of the manual for these instructions.
-PD46 set to 6 to change the function of the “RST” terminal to D3. When set to 6, D3 is now the Jog function. It works in forward or reverse depending on the position of switch 2.
-PD02 set to 1 to support the input from the external Potentiometer for speed control.
-PD11 set to 10. This sets the lowest frequency of the variable speed to 10HZ so the potentiometer can adjust the speed of the motor from 10HZ to 60HZ. The factory setting is 0 so when the pot is turned all the way down the motor stops.
-PD14 set to 5 to change the acceleration time (0Hz to 60HZ) to 5 seconds when run is selected. Factory setting is 20 seconds.
-PD15 set to 5 to change ramp down or deceleration time (60HZ to 0HZ) to 5 seconds. I was cautioned to go no lower than 5 seconds without connecting an external braking resistor. The VFD must be given time to dissipate the energy created by the motor as it slows (it acts as a generator when slowing). The internal braking circuits in the VFD cannot support aggressive deceleration and an external braking resistor must be added to slow to a stop quickly. Using the information in the manual, and some internet searches I settled on a 200 ohm, 200 watt resistor. I have ordered but not received it yet so the one shown in the schematic is not wired in currently. I will update this information when I get the resistor and experiment with aggressive slow down times.

[johnnyc14]

(07-05-2015, 08:58 AM)PixMan Wrote: Amazing work, and really good documentation. It brings me back to Darren's project in so many ways. You learned what we should have learned sooner, that you can buy the LH threaded rod in 1.25" for so much less than it takes to make it.

One question though, had you given any consideration to switching over to ballscrews on the X & Y while it was all apart? That could have afforded making it at least a two axis CNC for reasonable cost.

Anyhow, nice machine and you'll really appreciate having the increased mass, power and travel to work with in the future.

Thanks PixMan. I know nothing about CNC machining as I am a novice hobby machinist. I doubt I will ever consider converting this machine over but I never say never! It would be interesting to read about someone else's conversion though. Ball screws would be smoother and have no backlash I assume. They would probably last forever also.

You are right about the cost of the LH tread acme rod, the 3 foot long piece I bought cost $45. Making the threaded rod or the nuts is out of the question for my novice skills.

I am really enjoying this bigger mill, as you say, it has so much more mass and power that it makes every job I've done on it seem effortless. At some point I'm probably going to sell my 2 year old PM932PFD mill as I really don't have space for both of them but it is cool to have them both set up for different tasks.

John

[stevec]

John, thanks for the VFD info, I'll get around to checking it out with the temporary set-up I have and if there are any questions I'll get back to you.
Sorry for the belated welcome to the forum, I just noticed that you've been here since Nov. 2013. I just don't remember any of your earlier posts (don't worry there's a lot of things I don't remember as I enter my dotage )

Steve