Free machinery in Birmingham, AL

[56Safari]

Not my stuff, but I saw it this morning browsing the classifieds. Horizontal boring mill, drill press and turret lathe. Looks like they want someone to take it all, and you’d probably need to bring something with you to move it.

Free machinery

 

[C-Bag]

WOW!

Talk about TONS OF FUN!

They all look used but not rust buckets like so many I’ve seen. The boring mill reminds me of the one on Steam Powered Machine Shop.

 

[benmychree]

The boring mill looks old enough to be driven by steam! Looks like it was originally line shaft driven, perhaps teens or 20s. Later ones by Giddings & Lewis were quite nice and simple to run, unlike a good many others with controls that exhibited no rhyme or reason as to what lever sent which axis one way or another, such as Lucas and Universal. With G&L, the levers were set in the direction you wanted the travel to go, and rapid travel is in the same direction,

 

[C-Bag]

you’d probably need to bring something with you to move it.

Uh, yeah. Each one of those machines you‘d need to probably need a rigging company to move. I can’t even guess at like the boring mill alone. Certainly not just a trailer and a pickup.

 

[benmychree]

I would guess for the boring mill, about 16 - 18,000 lbs., not hard to move with proper equipment, but would take a drop deck trailer or a big forklift to load, with a machine like that, you use a toe jack to raise the light end, and place dunnage until the balance point is found and the heavy end can be raised by lowering the formerly light end and placing skates under the heavy (column) end, then raising the tail end until a skate can be placed under it; skates come in sets of four, but mostly they are used in threes due to uneven floors and it being more difficult to steer 4 than 3.
With a reasonably well finished and swept floor, one person could move that machine, lacking those conditions, a come along would serve. The machinery mover that moved my 3" bar Universal, had a device like a Johnny Bar, but powered with an electric motor, it had solid rubber tires and a long extension cord with alligator clips to connect with my 3 phase power.

 

[C-Bag]

The boring mill looks old enough to be driven by steam! Looks like it was originally line shaft driven, perhaps teens or 20s. Later ones by Giddings & Lewis were quite nice and simple to run, unlike a good many others with controls that exhibited no rhyme or reason as to what lever sent which axis one way or another, such as Lucas and Universal. With G&L, the levers were set in the direction you wanted the travel to go, and rapid travel is in the same direction,

No way of knowing without running it what kind of shape it’s in. I’d never been around a boring mill until the steam powered YT and the stuff he used for was mostly boring steam engines and other old engines like hit or miss. The next level up for me to understand how useful it was, a guy on YT only used one to make all kinds of cool projects. He was in a Spanish speaking country but there was no talking. I forgot to subscribe and lost track of him. Of course there’s no way I could ever own something like that mill because no real shop, just a garage. But it would be a useful machine for somebody who had the room.

 

[benmychree]

A horizontal boring mill can be one of the most productive and handy machines in a shop, due to its capacity and sliding spindle, and lots of power/torque, used for boring, milling, and drilling, tapping; most everything that a lathe cannot easily do, your workpiece is at table height unlike a milling machine where the table rises and falls, making it handier to run, especially with large workpieces. The ones at the shop where I apprenticed had 6 ft of vertical travel and about 10 ft of horizontal (table) travel and about 8 ft in and out, with 5" diameter spindles with #6 MT. Routinely, we would bore in excess of 48" holes in steel and alloy cast iron/Meehanite.

 

[56Safari]

Uh, yeah. Each one of those machines you‘d need to probably need a rigging company to move. I can’t even guess at like the boring mill alone. Certainly not just a trailer and a pickup.

Definitely not a pickup.. but I’ve seen some creative people out there move big stuff with very little.. I watched some guys move a 40’ sea container that weighed around 9,000 lbs with a jack, old cut up telephone poles and an F-350.. they just leap frogged the telephone poles and rolled it into place.

 

[NCjeeper]

Perfect sized HBM. If it wasnt so old I would grab it.