Using my 1943 Rock Ford Metal Planer to restore a Bridgeport Mill I am rebuilding.. Show you the setup and planning the top in this part.. Part 2 will have planning the dovetails.
I am younger but I can only spend so much, I have restored a Fadal VMC 4020, a nice 1989 Acra mill and a lathe. I always want more machines to rebuild but out where I live, they are all gold so they don't come cheap.
As a hobby shop for sure, no doubt. I would bet as a professional shop just to keep costs down on machine time they would go for the shortest stroke and machine run time to stay competitive, that being said they probably wouldn't be doing this with a planer either lol
@@thecanadiantradesman7916 In that case they probably would. Shaping introduces much less residual stresses in the material than milling, thus allowing to machine the table without warping it all over the place
Hey you said comment so here it goes, glad Don came by to supervise. Your wife brought liquid refreshments, I have been getting into diet ginger beer myself. Was waiting for you to put a cramp on the backside, rod and a wedge, anything, but you remembered. Doing good. Myself I have just been making parts for the engineers, getting them coming out to see me before they go home, pick their brain and I throw my 2 cents in, maybe I won't have to make so many prototype parts that way. Engineers are special, tool and die guys just have to figure out what they want done, make it work and explain it to them so they can change it in autocad, but now they use solid works. Give me a Big Chief tablet and a pencil. Ok, been commenting about work, been a 2 year ordeal at work, I have been there 9 months now, 2 engineers have thrown their hands in the air and quit on this new line, they got mad and put part of it on the die shop to handle, we handled it. Wish us luck, we are making parts now, hand testing components now, but making parts for auto test machine now. Can't explain too much, proprietary stuff. But I am making this stuff on a Bridgeport clone. How much stuff has been turned out on a Bridgeport, toolroom mill of choice, might not be the best at anything but it will do everything. Handier than a pocket on a shirt.
I really dont know any thing about this type of work I am a Animator by trade but I found this so relaxing thank you for the video and time to relax and enjoy some thing different, have a great day.
@@10swatkins good morning! Sir. How wide is your cutting bit, and how much step over did you use? Is there a certain… “percentage” of overlap from pass to pass you were shooting for? Thanks.
@@trevorjarvis3050 That bit is 5/8" wide and I was taking about a .250 step over... IN this case I was having to play with the settings to eliminate chatter... When I hit upon something that worked I stay with it :) Sometimes you can go wider, sometimes you have to narrow it up... All depends on the casting and hardness of the iron..
@@10swatkins yes Sir, if it works don’t fix it. I’ve run a small shaper like Mr Pete has. That must be a rather powerful planer. I didn’t think the step over would be that much. I kinda thought it would more like an 1/8 with a 1/2” tool bit. Great video, looking forward to the dovetails being cut.
@@trevorjarvis3050 I have taken 3/4 inch step overs :) This thing will peal metal! IT will also do surgical strikes... When the casting cost 2000.00 to replace, which would you do?
I wish you were a couple thousand miles closer. I would have mine sitting on your door step to do. I have an older Gorton mill that could use some love like this. I enjoy your videos Steve. Joe
I’d love to have a machine like yours, be awesome to be able to plane my lathe bed ways. You sir have some fantastic skills. Greetings from Perth Australia 🇦🇺
I love that machine! It does such a nice job of flattening stuff! The base that your planer table rides back and forth on must be flat within 100 millionths or better! That Planer is one nice machine! :)
Very useful tool. I like seeing historic production pictures showing rows of parts being cut simultaneously. I also like the idea of a milling head on one too; the long-travel stable bed with a milling head would be quite a contraption.
On this planer a mill head would be problematic. With the bed being moved by a large cylinder there is not absolute travel speed as with something with a screw. Thus I can see lots of mill bits being snapped in half ! Mill bits use rotary movement to cut and are sensitive to speed.
Super cool video. I am amazed by some of these old machines. And people who know how to use them. I am just learning some basic machining. So I watch a ton of videos and learn a ton Thanks
If you are happy, we are happy. Glad to see someone else does a diet dew a day. I also do a brew a day, but after I finish in the shop. And Don, tell Steve the batteries in the flash light will last longer if he turns it off.🤓
I am happy.... Who knew the batteries would last longer! .... Actually I was using it for camera lighting and to keep the people that make batteries busy :)
First time watching. When you talked about why you run the whole bed length I thought you were going to say to the bed wears the same the whole way across. Which it would. Like we see in many machines, the wear is never all the way. It's always in the most used place. Great video. Thanks.
I used to suck them Mountain Dews down. A buddy got me started on them and I made up for lost time. Kept two 6-packs in the company truck tool box all the time but here in the hills it's not hard to get the real thing. This was after my all expenses paid tropical vacation where I about burned my kidneys out drinking Fanta orange and grape because the water point was almost all the time messed up. And as it was said about Carl Jackson a while back, I'm glad to see the beautiful and talented Don Madre, the Rembrandt of the rebuilt and restored metal working machine world back in his rightful place, trying to turn your planer over by leaning on it. And remember, ONE Dew a day. And don't forget the GATE! GBWYall!
Well I used them to keep me awake :) After the heart attack they are trying to keep my heart rate and pressure down... I was thinking maybe a few MD's might be at cross purposes...
Very nice, to the people who think your not going fast enough, you can hear it howling in the middle from being un supported, but int needs to be unsupported so its flat in "free state", also the same reason you would fight it on a grinder; the chuck wants to suck the bow out of the table, then it comes back on the surface plate
And ToT has his kid / cats / time travel, etc etc, Joe Py his worlf spiders, RotarySMP his channel's #1 fan, Nico, and of course Ollie has ratty / croc / baby rat / cocky / magpie, and kookaburra
You know, that the lift you need for A/C unit is already available and can usually be rented. So don't build one just rent one for a day, remember you need all the space you got to do what you got. The last shots of the planing of the table top were the money shots. Beautiful!! Enjoyed watching and good to see Don.Thanks!!!!
I have two AC's mounted high and will need it more than once... All I am doing is taking some scrap 2x2 angle and making a two foot extension that will clamp onto the top of the lift table and be stored upstairs. Also both AC's are above obstacles , one the air compressor and the other a work bench. The new extension will extend out from the base of the platform lift about 30 inches to allow me to lift over the obstacles..
There is a lot of knowledge based set up to get these kind of results....I wonder, how fine of a step over can you take with this planer...?? Looking forward to see the magic on how you do the dove tails on the back side.
The step over is controlled by the hydraulic motor... I can set it down pretty fine but for this you want wider step over to create the slight ridges for parts to sit on... Too fine or scraped surfaces make parts hard to move around...
Way to be chugging the Mountain Dew! Watched the entire thing. You and your machine, your assistants, and the Mountain Dew delivery guru, are top notch. You have obviously been there and done that. Thanks for sharing and yes I hit the subscribe button. I play weekend blacksmith and ypur style of videos I find very interesting and informative. And I choose to be the one that is deaf - What? [Your door sign - love it!]
I've run shapers but not planers and they are beautiful and the nice thing is if you run them slow enough and precise you can have your whole house painted by Don by the time the part is finished. These machines are why I have to stay off Auction Sites and even ebay or I'll come up with another excuse to the wife... The old dreaded Bridgeport table really looks nice, Steve. Imagine if our tables could speak, man the stories they could tell from abuse. Ricko
Man I would love to come across a planer like that. Where I live industrial machining just isn't a main industry so equipment is hard to find aside from your basic small lathe and the odd bridgeport style mill here and there. On top of that they always are priced like they're made of sterling silver or gold and in just above scrap condition or beyond scrap. I managed to purchase my first modern style lathe last year and am extremely happy with it, it's a late 70's early 80's YANG 2000HG, swings 20" and has a gap which allows about 31" and a 80" bed length. Needs a bunch small things but it is in overall pretty decent condition. All the speeds and feeds work well and runs quiet so I was happy about that and as far as my initial inspection went doesn't have to much wear even up close to the head stock. Once I take the time to fix a few minor things on it il get it off my machinery skates and level it out to see exactly what kind of condition the bed is in. It does have flame hardened ways on it and no real visible wear so I'm optimistic on how good it really is but for what I do or plan to do with it I could set it up in my driveway and it would still be accurate enough. Usually just make the odd pin bushing and pins for a bucket or grapple and the odd hydraulic cylinder rod end here and there. I'm still on the lookout for a good milling machine but I waited 25 years to find this lathe I'm sure I can wait a bit longer to find a mill.
Looking forward to the rest of this series especially the turcite/rulan process there’s not very many good videos of this process of correcting warped and bent machine tool castings besides just scraping and making a new gib
@@10swatkins i need to do something with my lathe compound it’s horribly worn and as of now I don’t trust my mill to machine it close enough to scrap it in
@@jeremycable51 Trucite is really easy to scrape... In fact usually with cast iron I don't mill anything that is less than 5 thousand out... Of course I have a power scraper and a power flaker also.. A lot can be done with power tools :)
We never had a Planer that big, but we did have a Surface Grinder that big. The surface grinder could spark out a tolerance of 0.0002, but it took an hour for the machine to get warmed up enough to hold that kind of tolerance.
Being new to machinist videos, I have not seen a planer like yours before. Impressed by the result and thanks for taking the time to explain why the long stroke, before you explained, I had assumed it was to keep your planer bed wear more even over the length. After the explanation, I was watching the head kick twice on the backstroke almost every stroke and when I could watching the head move to the side at the start of every forward stroke, and the settle time that followed. Would be nice to see the table on the machine it came from. I assume you will be showing work on the other side of the table?
There is a whole play list of the machine from start to now.... You will see every side :) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-z9GP0R4fCOk.html
If I'm not mistaken, they don't actually remove any metal until ~ @38:00 ... Seems an excellent tool (attachment?) that MANY mills would benefit from It'd also be great to not only plane mill but lathes. THis is awesome.
A planed mill table is a great idea, plenty of quality machines such as Deckel’s have planed tables. Much less likely to develop a raised up ding than a ground table.
Steve that is the coolest vintage equipment that would give you the potential to get as close to perfection as a man can get ! It's a lot louder than even the biggest ones iv seen (check out Curtis at CEE cutting-edge engineering) he just got the biggest I have seen anywhere certainly in its line of manufacture and it would have some limitations where you would not ! I don't know enugh to know what makes one better than the other . However I'm positive I would have a lot more fun with your planer than any shaper I have seen !
Don't care how big it is it's still a shaper :) Shapers are limited by stroke and table size. My planer is limited also but that limit is 96 inch stroke ! I could find a bigger one if needed :) Not so on a shaper...
I’ve had a shaper obsession since I first saw one. Planers are awesome as well, but that thing is bigger than my home shop (10’x12’ shed with concrete floor). I still don’t have a shaper, someday though. My father has been a job shop machinist for 40+ years now, always tells me shapers, planers, jig borers and horizontal mills (K&T and such) are obsolete. He’s not wrong, he’s just surrounded by million dollar CNC machines at work. The rest of us have to get by with old technology that isn’t as fast.
For 99% of the jobs even planers are obsolete.. For rebuilding machine tools and straight edges they are low cost machines that are well suited for the work... Slower but this is not production work. I hear you on the size.. I am struggling with a 40x 60!
Ah but it is as fast, if you want to make small numbers of parts, by the time they have programmed the cnc and checked all the tooling, found this plane and that plane you can have a few done on a manual machine,
@@michaelrandle4128 they have Proto-Traks for that. The only manual machining left is high-precision lathe work. If you’ve never seen a 50hp horizontal CNC remove metal, you’ll have a hard time catching it despite set-up time. MasterCAM is phenomenally good, every modern CNC can probe a part faster than you can indicate it in a manual machine, and when you have a tool library of 600+ tools and 115 tools in the tool changer, there are few advantages to manually machining the parts. Especially if it’s complex. The 5-axis machines are incredible with a good programmer. Sadly, manual machining is dying. It will always exist at some level, but the days of even low-production being cost effective are quickly becoming history.
@@KennyEaton603 "Sadly, manual machining is dying. It will always exist at some level, but the days of even low-production being cost effective are quickly becoming history." The real shame is that these old manual machines will probably run fine in another 50-100 years if you take care of them, the same is not true for CNC machines.
@@mayshack I truly believe that machining itself is slowly dying. As metal 3D printing improves and becomes more cost effective, it’s going to become difficult to compete with. There isn’t much left made from actual metal anyway. Everything is injection molded plastic and cast garbage metal. The world is in a race to the bottom, and for reasons I don’t understand. I personally appreciate things I can buy knowing they will outlast me.
I thought about leaving 2000 comments but then thought better of it. Nevertheless enjoyed the video - I love seeing the planer in action. Judging by the first passes there seemed to be a little twist in the top surface.
Just had my 70 year old Bridgeport delivered, so really hoping you will get back to your Bridgeport restoration - with more videos of the process. I found your channel searching Bridgeport Mill on RU-vid & since this one you’ve done everything but get back to your Bridgeport restoration. 😂 Don’t get me wrong - the non Bridgeport videos are very interesting too, just not as relevant to me personally as seeing what you do next with your Bridgeport restoration. 👍👍👍🇦🇺
The next video is probably finishing up the planing on the mill table.... I do have to make a tool before I can finish the Bridgeport... I don't have a finished 4' edge with the angle on it... I will plane one and scrape it in probably in the second video to come ;) . I am just spread too thin and things are always shuffled for priority,,, And I am setting up things for a long session of scraping things in..... I have three machines sitting here that need parts scraped and though I would just work through them all at once...
@@10swatkins Understand completely. I’m of a similar age to you & also not in the greatest shape health wise, so I just do what I can do, when I can get to it. I hope you will continue to approach your tasks in like fashion. I’m the same in that, I have jobs lined up that need doing, but there’s always something else that I have to do first. 😂👍👍👍🇦🇺
That looks great. I appreciate your dilligence and workmanship to not be in a big hurry. Question - My old Bridgport table has some weld repair areas. Can it still be planed?
Depending on the type of material they welded it with... Most weld deposits are harder than the cast iron and will cause the tool to jump when it hits the harder surface.. If it is a lot of welds it would be better to have it ground...
That's a damn good finish. My department at work just inherited a beat up old bridgeport, and there are so many battle scars on the table it looks like someone's been using it for target practice. I would love to take it off and get it skimmed back to clean metal, but the damage is too deep, so I think my only option is to fill in the dings with JBWeld and then stone everything down flush. Some people have no respect for their machines.
