# New to me Ferro mill (Taiwanese Bridgeport clone)



## johnnyc14

I am picking up this Ferro branded 10 X 50 Taiwanese mill tomorrow. I have been thinking of buying a bigger mill for a while now and was almost ready to order a PM949V from Matt. Then the Canadian dollar went in the toilet. This one was listed for sale locally and I went to have a look at it. It runs nicely and looks to be in pretty good shape so I bought it. I will take some pics of the move process. This should be interesting as it weighs 2500 lbs.


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## thomas s

That looks like a nice mill and power feed on the table also. thomas s


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## LEEQ

Cool find, that's a big table!


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## xalky

Looks like a good solid machine. Congrats.


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## FOMOGO

Looks like a nice mill. I think the Taiwanese machines are pretty much at the top of the import list. Looks like variable speed? Nice score. Mike


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## johnnyc14

Well we got the mill home but it was a bit of an adventure. The seller had told me he could easily load it on my borrowed trailer with his gantry crane. I borrowed a tilt deck car hauler trailer for the move which turned out to be a stroke of good fortune. When I got to the sellers place, it was a bitterly cold day, about-20 C with a nasty wind. His gantry crane was outside and the extension legs were seized up from rust and the cold and all efforts to free them were unsuccessful. At the retracted height it would only lift the mill about 6 inches off the ground. That turned out to be enough as I tilted the car hauler deck so the back of the beaver tail was touching the ground and backed the trailer so it sat slightly under the raised base of the mill. I slid a sheet of OSB plywood under it, wrapped a tow strap around the base of the mill and used the trailers winch to pull thr mill


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## johnnyc14

Sorry, I am apparently too slow and did not complete the above before it timed out. I'm not liking the forum format with my ipad but it is OK with my PC.
As I was saying, I winched the mill up to the middle of the trailer and strapped it down securely. I made the 1 hour drive to my place while my hands and feet thawed. My friend Darcy (Mitsou on this forum) met me there and we backed the trailer so the tips of the beavertail were just inside the garage door and strapped the mill to the winch cable and tilted the trailer deck down. We used pry bars to muscle it down the slope giving the winch cable a couple of inches of slack at a time. Eventually we got it to slide all the way down and onto Darcy's machine skates. In all this time I had not take a single pic so I finally remembered to take this one with my phone. Thanks To Darcy we got it unloaded with out incident.


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## johnnyc14

It is now sitting in my garage raised on wood blocks so I can build a rolling base for it. I decided to make the base similar to the one I made for my lathe and my PM932 mill so it can have wheel mounted to it at any time for easy moving. Because of the weight of this thing I decided to make it in 2 parts and bolt them together so I won't have to lift the mill any higher to get the base under it. The weight and top heavy nature of this machine make me nervous and I want to widen it's footprint to make it more stable. Here are some pics of the base build project.


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## johnnyc14

On the previous machine I was just using plain 6201 ball bearings for wheels but the front of this machine is so heavy that the outer races were breaking so I machined some steel tires and pressed the bearings into them for this mill.













I had to machine some angled spacers to use on the rear hold down studs because the top of the base is angled. I just hogged the treads out of a couple of 3/4" nuts and milled them off at a 15 degree angle.













The front and rear parts of the base are bolted together with four 3/8" grade 8 bolts on 1/4" thick flanges.




It can be rolled into position by just turning the wheels in the direction you want with a wrench and it is quite easy to push on a clean floor and much more stable feeling.


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## johnnyc14

This mill did not come with a handle for raising/lowering the knee. I have a length of 1.75" stainless round stock so I used a 2" long piece to machine an adapter for the knee drive splines. It is a 9 spline drive with a 1.675" od. I used a 3/16" end mill and my super spacer on my PM932 mill to machine the spline and a 15/16" hex on the other end as well as a 1/2" square drive hole to use with a drill. I started by drilling a 1/2" hole all the way through and turning the entire length down to 1&5/8". Then I bored it to 5/8" part way to fit onto the knee. Then I milled the splines with 40 degree spacing. I found that if I milled out 4 degrees on each side of each 40 degree interval it gave the correct dimension spline to fit the machine.


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## GA Gyro

Nice buy!  

I bought a PM935 in Oct of 2014... probably a little brother to your new mill... IMO you will enjoy this machine.

If you want to move it and are concerned about the 'top heavy' issue with a BP J head machine... put the knee table all the way down and rotate the head over so the motor is down.  This is the way they are shipped from Taiwan, they are a LOT easier to move around in this configuration...


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## johnnyc14

I bought a Huanyang 3KW vfd on ebay to convert my shop 240V single phase power to the 3 phase this motor takes.It has taken a couple of days to figure out all the wiring and paramater settings. I have set it up with 2 latching switches for Run and Rorward/Reverse and a momentary switch for Jog and a 10Kohm linear pot for variable frequency. Amazingly after researching and setting all the necessary parameters as per the manual it all works as I intended.

I will post  some pics and more information on my settings if anyone is interested.


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## johnnyc14

After running the mill for a while to test my VFD settings I noticed a rattling noise from the belt drive area. Looking up through the missing belt cover hole I could see the upper bearing was loose on the bearing cover. The outer race was spinning. I removed the 3 screws holding the cover down and it just lifted off, the bearing is supposed to be a light press fit into the cover. The mill came with a box of extra parts that includes most of another head branded "Kent USA" but all the parts appear to be the same as this Ferro branded mill. There was a good upper bearing cover with that box of parts. I bought a new 6007 2RS bearing and installed it on the shaft and used the hold down bolt to pull the "new" cover down onto the bearing. The head runs much quieter now.




After running the machine at 2000rpm for 30 minutes with no load it seems like the rest of the bearings are OK as there are no more unusual noises and the spindle was nice and cool.


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## johnnyc14

I have completely dis-assembled the table, and knee on the mill to do a major clean-up and replace some worn parts. The Y axis lead screw and nuts are badly worn and the knee lift screw gear was full of cuttings. I am having some trouble finding replacement parts and may have to make the lead screw and nuts. Here are some pics.
Here's the bottom of the table after clean-up. It has some wear but not too bad.




This is how I removed it.




The cross slide before clean up.




I used a jack to lift the knee after removing the bevel  gear assembly.







I can't believe the knee lift actually worked pretty smoothly like this.




I removed the knee with my engine lift and used engine shampoo and a pressure washer to clean it up.










I re-installed the knee with new bearings on the bevel gear shafts and put lots of high pressure grease on the bevel gears and made a shield out of a piece of plexi-glass to keep the chip out of the bevel gears
















The knee is back on and the gib adjusted.


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## johnnyc14

You can see here how badly the Y axis lead screw is worn in the middle. The one shot oiler ports into the nuts were completely blocked. The X axis screw and nuts are in good shape. The screw is 1.25" acme screw with left hand thread. I have ordered a 3 foot length of screw and should be able to make the screw shaft with no problem on the lathe. The keyways I can cut on my PM932 mill. I am trying to find a source for the nuts.









This is a rough drawing of the nuts, if anyone has any ideas where I can get some I would be grateful.


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## catmechanic47

After posting the same problem with my Sharp, I took advice offered and bored and sleeved nuts. Then recut threads. Worked like a charm. See split nut repair in this forum.


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## johnnyc14

catmechanic47 said:


> After posting the same problem with my Sharp, I took advice offered and bored and sleeved nuts. Then recut threads. Worked like a charm. See split nut repair in this forum.



Thanks for your input. I looked at your thread but I'm not clear on the repair you made. More detail would be appreciated. I'm leaning toward order these nuts from McMaster Carr and machining them to match the originals. Pretty pricey though.
http://www.mcmaster.com/#95090a429/=wiprd5


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## catmechanic47

Sorry about brievity in previous post. I first chucked up the nut halves and bored them out past thread root apx. .100". then made a sleeve with a slight interference fit on OD and pressed sleeves into nut shell with red lock tite. Then cut new threads. It has worked well to this point. I wish I had taken pictures like you. I like your idea for covering the knee drive. Mine was in a similar condition when I first exposed it. Thats a nice job your doing. Good Luck.


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## johnnyc14

Thanks again for you input. I didn't want to go to the trouble of machining the lefthand acme threads in the nuts. I did try to order the nuts in the link above from McMaster Carr but they would not ship them to me. The is the reply I got to my order.

Hi John,
Due to the complexity of U.S. export regulations, McMaster-Carr accepts international orders only from businesses. This decision also applies to orders shipping within the United States, because it is based on the final destination of the items. We cannot accept this order or future orders.

I'm going to have to find another source for the nuts or make my own. This is turning out to be a pain in the butt!

John


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## johnnyc14

Well, I called Roton industries and ordered the nuts. The sales rep said they can be shipped to Canada, no problem. We'll see I guess. These can be machined to fit and are bronze.


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## chevydyl

the nuts can be found at Supra Machine Tool store on ebay, i have an Acer mill and the manual shows these same tpye of nuts, the screw however is 32mm 5tpi, check your measuring to see if that adds up, they also give the measurements for the nuts.
heres a link to the X axis nuts
and to the Y axis nuts


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## johnnyc14

Thanks very much for the links. You are right, the screw is 32 mm (1.259") and the thread is not metric trapezoidal, it is Acme 5 treads per inch. Weird combination.  I guess the manufacturer wanted .200" per revolution but still used metric sized rod to make the screws. The nuts listed by Supra are quite close in dimension to the ones from my machine. Mine are 40 mm in diameter for the entire length of the small diameter, not stepped like the one Supra lists. I have already received the nuts I ordered from Roton Industries and machined them to fit. I'll post some pictures later. The Y axis screw was very worn so I will replace it with 1.25" Acme rod (easy to find locally) and the nuts from Roton will work perfectly for that. Since the X axis feed screw is OK I think I will order some nuts from Supra for the X axis. The customer service with Roton was first rate. They included the customs declaration form with the shipment identifying the parts as made in the USA so there was no duty charged by customs and they arrived one week after I ordered them. McMaster Carr just blew me off when I tried to order from them. I got an email saying my order had been cancelled because the export regulations were too complicated.


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## johnnyc14

I machined the nuts  I got from Roton Industries to fit the machine. They are a very precise fit on the thread shaft I bought locally (1.25" acme left hand thread). The OD of the new nuts was a little smaller then the originals but has no effect on how the nuts fit or adjust. The pic show the original nut and the before and after state of the new nut.
















Here are some pics of the machine work on the cross slide screw to fit the machine.



















I made the threaded part 1/4" longer in case I ever decide to install a power feed for the Y axis.










Polishing the threads.




























New bearings




It fits!




The handle turns super smoothly and I have adjusted the nuts to provide .004" backlash.  I'm now waiting for the new nuts from Supra for the X axis screw.


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## johnnyc14

I have been working on this mill to get it set up with all the options I want. I still have to decide if I'm going to sell my PM932 so I'm going to use the Ferro mill for a while before I make up my mind. Anyway, here are some pics of the repairs made and options installed.

The X axis feed rod nuts I got from Supra machine (thanks again chevydyl) were almost a perfect fit with only minor mods needed to installe them. Now the X axis has only .006" backlash and is smooth as can be.

The screw was broken off in the power down feed handle so I carefully drilled a hole in the center of it. Since I didn't have a small enough easy out I just tapped a very small Robertson screwdriver bit into the screw and it backed out easily. I cleaned up the threads with a 4mm tap and made a new handle.
















I bought a 4" cast aluminum hand wheel locally and bored the center hole to 1/2" to fit the manual downfeed shaft. I drilled a holed and installed a 1/8" roll pin to fit the drive hole in the hub on the shaft.










The original drawbar was in bad shape so I made a new one from 7/16" CRS and welded a 1/2" deep nut onto it. I made up and new extension hub with a centering bushing machined on the end of it. The new draw bar is 2 piece and I happy with it.


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## johnnyc14

I removed the face plate from the VFD and mounted it in the door of my electrical box and also mounted all the switches there for easy access. I had already ordered a FC10P cable off ebay to allow the display to be mounted remotely.


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## johnnyc14

I ordered a Sinpo 3 axis DRO on ebay and installed it. Quite a bit of finicky work to get all the scales aligned perfectly, it took me 2 days to get the install done and scales aligned to my satisfaction.













I installed a rubber sheet way cover system for the horizontal way behind the table and the vertical knee way. Then an accordion style for the way in front of the table.



















After all those upgrades I used the machine today for the first time for a couple of jobs and so far I'm impressed. Having the extra mass compared to my PM932 makes quite a difference in the feel of the work when making deep milling cuts in steel. Cuts that would make the PM932 shake and protest don't bother the bigger mill one bit, it plows through with no vibration or shuddering.

It's not pretty but it seems to work great.


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## GA Gyro

From reading your thread and looking at the pics... 

I have a suspicion your mill is similar to this one:

http://www.machinetoolonline.com/PM-935HighPrecisionMills.html

If it is indeed similar... IMO you will enjoy it!


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## johnnyc14

I checked the tram on my Ferro mill today. I have been using it for about 4 months now and wanted to check and see if anything has moved. I told a buddy of mine that when I assembled the machine and checked the tram in June it was out less than .001" in a 9.5 inch 360 degree circle. He said bull-s**t, no 30 year old machine as neglected as that one would be that straight. Today I took a video of the tram check. No adjustments have been made since June and the only thing I did to prepare was to set knee height correct for the indicator I used and tighten the knee gib lock handles. The indicator is mounted to an arbor in the spindle and the machine was put in neutral to allow the spindle to turn easily.
Sorry for the crappy camera work but the result is pretty clear in the video. My buddy now owes me a case of cold ones!






John


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## chevydyl

Nice, I'm glad to see all the upgrades and fixes, I recently converted to cnc, there's a build thread on the cnc In the home shop subforum


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## Sandia

Looks good John, nice job on the process you used to rebuild the mill..


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## zmotorsports

Very nice setup John and fantastic job on the overhaul.  That should serve you quite well for many years to come.

Mike.


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## johnnyc14

Thanks guys, I really had my heart set on a new PM949 but with our dollar value right now it would have been over $10,000 CAD by the time I got it here. I've got about 1/3 that amount invested in this Ferro machine including the DRO and VFD. This weekend I will be dismantling the PM mill so the new owner can pick it up on Thursday. Then I'll move the big mill into the spot where the small one was. That will free up some space so I can get back to work on some motorcycle projects.


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## Techie1961

Well done! The repairs that you did are excellent and you should get many good years out of that mill. I'm considering to either cut my lead screws so that I can adjust the nuts closer or do as you did and make a new screw. I have to compare pricing since there is a local company that sells First and would have them in stock.


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## FOMOGO

Very nice job on the mill. I've got the table ready to come off my Bridgeport to check everything out and go through it. Mine also seems to have a lot more backlash/wear on the Y axis. I will be filing your post for reference for when I get to it. Thanks for posting. Mike


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## zmotorsports

johnnyc14 said:


>



John, again, great job on the restoration.

Did you fabricate the tailstock for your rotary table?  If so, do you have any more pics of it, I have been wanting to build/buy something similar for my 8" Vertex rotary table.

Mike.


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## johnnyc14

Hi Mike, I did fabricate the tailstock to work with both my home-made simple indexer and my Vertex 8" rotary table. I got the idea from a post by Mark F.

http://www.hobby-machinist.com/threads/tail-stock-for-the-indexer.26844/

I changed a few things like dimensions to work with my stuff and materials based on what I could get cheap. The steel plate with the square holes started life as a railway track bracket that I got from a local scrap metal dealer.
Here are some pics of the parts.


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## zmotorsports

Awesome.  Thanks John, I will definitely be copying that one soon.

Mike.


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## Leonard

I'm sure this question has come up a million times on this forum, but I'm a new member. Should a guy buy an old Bridgeport mill, and take my chances with what I get or purchase a new Taiwan knock off? I live in Canada and there's not a lot of Bridgeports for sale that I can see so a purchase would have to be done over the net,not seen in person. It seems I could end up buying a worn out machine. If I go with a Taiwan machine, at least everything will be good. But how is the quality?? I'm looking at a size of 9x49 with a 2 or 3 HP motor.


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## JimDawson

Leonard said:


> I'm sure this question has come up a million times on this forum, but I'm a new member. Should a guy buy an old Bridgeport mill, and take my chances with what I get or purchase a new Taiwan knock off? I live in Canada and there's not a lot of Bridgeports for sale that I can see so a purchase would have to be done over the net,not seen in person. It seems I could end up buying a worn out machine. If I go with a Taiwan machine, at least everything will be good. But how is the quality?? I'm looking at a size of 9x49 with a 2 or 3 HP motor.



I would never buy a used machine that I couldn't inspect personally.  Also consider a used Taiwan machine, there are a lot of good ones out there.  I don't know what the market is like in your area, but you may have to travel a ways to find THE machine.  A quick Craigslist search produced no results.


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## johnnyc14

I agree Jim. In my opinion the Taiwanese machine are pretty close in quality to a Bridgeport and in some case have improvements in features that old Bridgeport's don't have. There are currently 3 machines on Kijiji in Alberta that might suit you Leonard.

This Do-All

http://www.kijiji.ca/v-business-ind...ne/1129341436?enableSearchNavigationFlag=true

This Excello

http://www.kijiji.ca/v-power-tool/c...ne/1113650356?enableSearchNavigationFlag=true

This one sold by King Canada which I believe is Taiwanese.

http://www.kijiji.ca/v-cars-other/e...ne/1120996551?enableSearchNavigationFlag=true

These could all be potentially great machines. I live in the Edmonton area. if you want to look at any of these let me know. I can go along with you and helps you to determine if they are worth buying.

If you want a new machine you could call Modern Tool in Edmonton. With our dollar in the toilet their prices compete with American retailers like Quality Machine Tools and Grizzly.

http://www.modern-tool.calls.net/pr...-2vs-949-vertical-ram-turret-milling-machine/


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## middle.road

As I recall it was in the late 80's - early '90's when the Taiwanese manufacturers started to used better casting processes
and to age their castings. So a decent machine from that era on should be just fine.


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## 76kcfdcapt

Just making observation that this mill is the same as my Comet and the Seiki posted here. I am wondering how many brand names were given to the same Taiwanese machine?


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