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Bridgeport Line-A-Mill

dkarrick

Plastic
Joined
May 21, 2017
He everyone
Hoping there might be someone that has some experience and or info on the Line-A-Mill. I recently acquired one. Its in decent shape. I plan on using it in my home shop for projects. I believe they were manufactured around the early 70's but not sure. I would love to use the optic tracer but do not expect to get it going. I did read on here were a member said it was pretty easy to use the existing electric servos as power feeds and would love to do that. The machine may not need it but I am going to do a complete restore. Minus the optical tracer.I'm in the process of building myself a rolling bridge crane to help with the disassembly process. Thanks ahead of time for any help
 
Added an album with some before pics of the mill. Take a look at how clean the control cabinet was when I opened it.Everything else in the building had rats nest in it, but for some reason the cabinet wasn't touched. There's also a huge 2000 VA transformer on the back of the mill.I believe this was a constant voltage transformer to keep the voltage for the control at a constant. I know the man that owned it. Was setting in in his garage for at least 20 years. He never tried to use the tracer and may not have ever worked.
 
There is a Bridgeport section.

The "Line-A-Mill" was a POS for what it was intended to do. Optical tracer with lots of problems. That's the biggest reason you don't see many around. It probably looked more like this when new:
img71.gif

JR
 
The optical tracer (line-a-mill) was s 2D mschjne. All electric. The picture JR posted is a 3D copy machine. The hydraulic hoses in pic we're fed by a microservo valve controlled by a stylist or probe that you see protruding down. These machines usually had 2 to 3 heads which would be setup with raw parts to machine. The probe would follow the finished part via the hydraulic control. You could make multiple parts of the same part. Precursur for cnc. Advertised accuracy to within .0005". Sweet machine for it's day.
 
The picture JR posted is a 3D copy machine.

The picture was meant as an example! I am very familiar with 2D and 3D tracers.

The Line-A-Mill had a 2D optical tracer. It was a PITA in a shop enviroment, just like the optical tracers that were put on cutting torch tables. Dust and dirt were a problem. Acute angles were near impossible. It could mill you a square, as long as you liked rounded corners.

And as for the 0.0005" accuracy on the hydraulic tracer, good luck getting that on anything but a brand new machine. More like 0.005" or less on anything that I've ran or seen.
JR
 
Apologies for sounding like I was correcting you on the tracer. I know very little about the tracers. Misplaced the decimal point on the accuracy to. I had also read .005" I have only seen the hydraulic units run and they are very slow. The more info I gain about the optical tracer the less interested I become. Would love to find a manual or some electrical prints on it. I would still like to use the "x" & "Y" servo motors for power feeds. Any info would be greatly appreciated.
 
We got rid of the last tracer a couple of years ago. It was a Tru-Trace on a 60" Gray VTL with a whole bunch of travel.

IIRC, the Line-A-Mill stuff along with the early NC machines from BP were all DC servos. The drives will probably be the first to go. Big $ to replace. Not worth the time and effort. If you want a CNC, buy a CNC.
JR
 








 
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