Re-machine surface on a 5 feet square Acorn welding table, Greenville, SC.

[Milland]

This guy,Brian, has a HBM big enough to face off your table for you.

https://www.youtube.com/@bcbloc02

He has handling equipment but I'm not too sure about his overhead crane.
(Can't find the video where his overhead crane bites the dust and drops the RAD.)

He may have pulled it because he caught a lot of flack over it on a thread here. It was a sketch lift, and the drop did damage his drill, but he was unhurt which is the important thing.

 

[eKretz]

Yeah that was bad. Somebody sent me a link to that when it was first posted. Yikes. He got very very lucky.

 

[Radar987]

You'd be time and money ahead getting a part time job at Taco Bell and using that money to buy a new welding table, than trying to DIY "fix" that thing yourself.

 

[Nmbmxer]

I’d use a plunge router and a 1/4” carbide endmill to bring the ledge down to close to the level of the center. I’ve hand cut aluminum with a router but not CI, if it’s too hard to control maybe try a smaller endmill.

Then either make a fixture that uses the same router to machine the ledge down even with the center, similar to how a hand plane works. Or just finish with a grinder and a straight edge, which is probably faster.

 

[motion guru]

We have a planer mill big enough to handle the job, but as everyone has already commented . . . why throw good money after bad?

I would use it as is, the shoulders of the raised sections might come in hand. At most, I would machine one shoulder away to give a larger flat surface to work with.

This all makes me feel fortunate to have snagged two 5x5 Blanchard ground Acorns mounted to a single frame with fine pitch threaded jacks at each corner of each casting.

Deals are out there, you just need to be quick to take advantage of them.

Acorn welding table...7500.00?

Yoder machinery in Toledo has a 4x10 and a 4x8 for 7500.00 ea. seems way too high to me. What are they selling for?

www.practicalmachinist.com

 

[Overland]

An update for interest.
The underside of the table looks pretty flat, although not machined; so maybe turning it over could work.
A friend put me onto a shop in Marion, NC, with a big vertical lathe. Their hourly rate is $75, but the guy there suggested it would take a full day.
Anyway, I don't need any great finish on the table, so maybe one pass on the back might be enough, and not take all day.
I tried a simple experiment yesterday with a mini-grinder and generic cutoff wheel. I cut into one of the steps about 3/4" and broke the piece of with a hammer. There a little "semi-sphere" ( best way of describing it) about 3/16" dia that felt out from the new surface, leaving a depression. So some sort of cold ball in the casting, odd.
Anyway, just fabbing up a table for it now, to get it off my trailer.
Bob

 

[Milland]

I cut into one of the steps about 3/4" and broke the piece of with a hammer. There a little "semi-sphere" ( best way of describing it) about 3/16" dia that felt out from the new surface, leaving a depression. So some sort of cold ball in the casting, odd.

Bob

Hah, welcome to the world of iron castings, where scrap ball bearings, HSS tool bits, carbide chunks, and other stuff winds up. Unless they use a ceramic sponge filter or other means of getting the solids out, there's no telling what you may find...