Newbie picked up a Bridgeport series 1 mill and Hardinge T10 lathe

I rebuilt a final drive for a guy and he gave me the Bridgeport mill and Hardinge lathe. I know NOTHING about owning a mill or a lathe but know they will make building guns a lot easier.

The Bridgeport mill is in decent shape but the bed has a lot of slack in it. Some of the handles are missing. The owner said the DRO and power feed did not work. He did give me a whole cabinet full of tooling with it.

The Hardinge lathe is in pretty bad shape. It has sat for a while in an 18wheeler trailer used for storage. A lot of the bits and pieces are seized up. It got dropped at some point and at lease one handle is broken off.

I have not had a chance to look them over yet as they are still on the trailer. Honestly I don't even know what to look for.

Where do I start??

Where can you find info like manuals?
Where can you buy replacement parts?
Where can you find info on using a VFD to run 3phase equipment on single phase.

Replacement parts for the mill (there are others too):
High Quality Tools, Milling Machine Parts | HQTInc.com

Replacement parts for the lathe such as that ball handle for the top lever will not be available, but the new style hlv-h handle would probably fit. I would turn a piece of black delrin for that part. You have a missing hand wheel for the carriage and missing cross feed levers. The collet closure is missing too, if that model is built for one. If you got a 3 or 4 jaw chuck that would be a beginning. I have found that new style hlv-h parts fit on older HLV lathes.

Manuals will be online, just use a Google search.

Machines like that under VFD power have been repeatable discussed in RPC/VFD forum section.

Best I can do by looking at the pics from that distance.

After reading some around here I should probably add a few things.

1st I plan on playing with gun parts mostly. Nothing crazy precise.

2nd From what I can tell the wear in the Bridgeport is all in the lead screws. From what I understand they run through a set of brass nuts that can be replaced and there is also a backlash adjustment on them. Honestly I have not had a chance to look it over very well.

3rd I have found a VFD for the mill, but am not sure if it will work on the lathe. I am looking at a Mitsubishi D700 series Model FR-D720S-100-NA which is a 10 amp. Is this a decent choice? do I need more bells and whistles?

4th I am having trouble finding information on the Hardinge lathe. It is a model T10. Does anyone have any source of information on this machine? It needs a lot of work... I do not yet know if it is worth the time and money to get back in running condition.

I really like my automation direct vfd, rather cheap but have been running it for 5 years

The lead screw nuts are split so that you can compress then by turning an adjustment screw. Its way under under table above the y axis saddle, but it may be so far worn out that they will not have any adjustment left.

Youtube search for Bridgeport backlash adjustment.

Some backlash may come from loose bearings, which may be easily adjusted too

Backlash is ok, we learn to compensate. Most machines have it.

We just make sure we take up the backlash, and always move on the same direction.

Does Anybody have a good way to describe this?

This explains a bit about backlash, and how to live with it!

BACKLASH - Machining basics on the metal lathe and mill - YouTube

Link to manuals, this guy has a TON of other info too
http://manuals.chudov.com/Bridgeport/

1. You buy a VFD for the size HP of then motor, not necessarily the amps. Bigger is not better. I run TECO on most of my stuff.

2. Don't screw around with bootleg copies of manuals. Go here and get from Hardinge:
http://www.kneemills.com/index.asp?html=Documentation

3. Where do you start? What are your priorities and whats your budget? Are you going to USE the machines or make them look pretty?

4. Have some fun with this stuff!
JR

Ein,
I have owned a Hardinge T10 lathe for more than 30 years. I've spent
many hours standing in front of it and have a job for it this week.
Great small lathe capable of real work. Parts are hard to come by, but
as with a lot of older machines you can often make repair parts yourself.
Since you can repair a final drive an old mill and lathe should be
easy enough. If you ever decide to part the lathe out I could be
interested in some spares.
spaeth

Two potentially nice machines with your obvious abilities and unless theres more damage hidden which I doubt,Think you will get great satisfaction from bringing both up to scratch-Everything can be easily sourched for the Bridgeport the Hardinge a fantastic make the parts will be a bit more difficult but not impossible but you might wish to tackle making them yourself-Seen a lot worste.Take your time strip them clean them see whats needs doing reassemble.Probably desperate for cleaning and oiling