Help! Mill Re-assembly.

IMO, unless you are doing aerospace work just leave it. Your ways are nowhere near as bad as they look, those flaking marks are probably only .0002-.0004" deep. For instance my mill has over 20 thou wear on the X and Y axis, and it can still do some good work.

If you do want to fix the wear, look into Turcite as others' have pointed out. Contact Richard King on another board and attend one of his machinery rebuilding classes. I've heard great things about them.
 
Andre said:
IMO, unless you are doing aerospace work just leave it. Your ways are nowhere near as bad as they look, those flaking marks are probably only .0002-.0004" deep. For instance my mill has over 20 thou wear on the X and Y axis, and it can still do some good work.

If you do want to fix the wear, look into Turcite as others' have pointed out. Contact Richard King on another board and attend one of his machinery rebuilding classes. I've heard great things about them.
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Thanks for your views. That is what I was thinking but didn't want to influence anyone else's evaluation. Since there's at least some flaking visible I figured I could get away with flattening the gib some since that's got some deep wear. I just want is to hold an oil film and it likely won't with such a surface.

I'm planning on bluing it up just to see if there's any really high areas.

I looked into Turcite on a lathe bed once. Unless things have changed, it was required to mill down the ways enough to put down at least 0.050" of Turcite, or more. You can't just lay down a few thou to bring the worn spots up. :( Wouldn't that be nice?

And the curved grooves are oil delivery 'veins'. They look a little funky around the edges because I had to wire brush some crud out of them. I don't know what the hell they were using in this shop but everything is plugged up with what looks like charcoal, and it's hard!

Here's where we're at so far:
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  • mws
 
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The charcoal stuff is dried grease. Either the machine operator or shop helper was misinformed and took a grease gun to the oil zerks. I made the same mistake and had to rebuild my saddle. In all fairness , it had grease in there from the start :)

Your ways will still hold oil just fine, just lube every use like you should and you shouldn't have a problem.


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The back of the knee will show most of the wear at the bottom on the flats and the dovetails on the top, as gravity will pull it that way. The top of the knee will show most of its wear in the middle, with much flaking still visible on the ends. When I rescrape a Bridgeport I tip the front of the knee up, out of square, .0015 so as the back of the knee wears, it wears into the tolerance.

John Fahnestock
J&L Scraping Service
 
Sidecar580: Thanks for the advice. That sounds like the voice of a practiced hand. I don't know that I'd be able to assure that level of measurement given the equipment I have to work with. Large surface plates and camel back straight edges have yet to materialize in my shop. I'm sure I can get a decent feel for the condition of the ways once I start taking some measurements. I've only scraped a cross slide and a small surface grinder so far, and they turned out well. This Bridgeport is a horse of another color. Guess I don't have much choice though, as I try to keep most tolerances in my shop to +/- 0.0005. I'll post some more info once I get things under way.

Thanks to all.
 
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