What did I do? Bridgeport purchase

[jmkasunich]

My original plan was to have a shop and still be able to park my Jeep in the garage. Before I knew it there was no room for my Jeep. So I figured why not get a real mill! As long as I keep a spot open for my wife’s car I’m good.

Yep! I noticed the ram lever just before bed yesterday. I was able to work the broken bit of lever out. I stuck a 3/8 bolt in it and discovered my ram is seized up. I can get it to barely move but end up bending the makeshift bolt “handles” in the process. After I get my VFD and if my head is good I’m going to buy this upgraded ram pinion that uses a wrench instead. But not until I know my mill is a keeper because this pinion is about $150 shipped.

View attachment 443841

Why buy it? There is enough meat on the tapered portion of the original pinion that you can just mill a hex on it. I did that myself recently (can't find a photo on my phone or I'd prove it). I never liked that little handle, much prefer to use the same 3/4" wrench that fits the locks.

 

[mksj]

The VFD you set the kW (Hp) and number of poles. You should also do a motor autotune once everything is setup which tunes the VFD to the motor. Since you have a Reeves drive, you will need to run this in static mode as apposed to dynamic (running) since you have no way to uncouple the motor from the drive train. With a Reeves drive (mechanical speed adjust) I recommend using the mechanical speed adjust for most of your speed changes, and keeping the VFD speed pot range to something like 30-60 Hz. You can increase the carrier frequency to 8kHz which will decrease the whine, but with older motors I do not recommend going above this as it can may cause insulation issues over a long period of time. Of you take a picture or list the motor specifications I can give you some recommended parameter and wiring information. You can use either what is called 2 wire control which is a sustained 2 way switch for FOR-STOP-REV, or 3 wire control which uses momentary switches for the FOR, STOP, and a sustained switch to REV the spindle direction. With 2 wire control you also wanted to setup the VFD so it cannot run when powered up if yo have the switch in the FOR or REV positions. All these commands are done with the low level VFD inputs, the motor is directly wired to the VFD.

Newer DRO's are inexpensive, better to replace the DRO and scales then try to adapt the current scales.