Bridgeport Tru-Trace Mill - Just bought...worth?

PCFree50 · Dec 5, 2019

So while looking for a manual Bridgeport, I came across this tracer mill at auction. I hope I gave a decent price for it, but I am clueless on what these are worth. I never knew about them till I stumbled across this one and everything I read about tracers has me excited at the possibilities.
I stumbled across a thread here about someone finding a tracer on Craig's list for $1500 from a decade ago The pictures show a rough machine that only seams to have a Bridgeport J-head but a different knee

donie · Dec 9, 2019

These seem to be showing up locally, my brother bought one in great shape that has two step pulley heads, he wants to use one of the heads on another machine, but play around with the tracer function. I have no idea what they are worth, but likely no more then the milling head, or heads mounted on them.

RidgeCreek · Dec 12, 2019

Agreed, not worth much more than what the J-head is worth. I sold one of those about 2yrs ago for little more than scrap price.

Had it for sale on Craigslist & other places for a while with no interest. Needed it gone ASAP so I slashed the price. Guy bought it thinking he was going to convert to manual. I told him that it has no screws to attach handles to. He told me he new what he was doing. Great! Get it out of here! I wonder how that project turned out.

PCFree50 · Feb 24, 2020

I picked up an Advance cross-slide rotary table that can give me a little manual operation with the cross-slide

Ken hosford · Feb 24, 2020

To Play with ? what is fun worth ? as in production or 1 of machining most likely you will be so far behind a cnc machine it is cheaper to farm it out for commercial purposes.
What a guy can do with it may make it worth the space but I doubt it .
If it is the back bone to a home play shop it could be fun

PCFree50 · Feb 27, 2020

Ken hosford said:
To Play with ? what is fun worth ? as in production or 1 of machining most likely you will be so far behind a cnc machine it is cheaper to farm it out for commercial purposes.
What a guy can do with it may make it worth the space but I doubt it .
If it is the back bone to a home play shop it could be fun

What has been suggested are items that need to be copied where writing a program for a single item would be cost prohibitive. We have a large steam engine society here in West Michigan that also includes Hit or Miss engines. When a part is broken, if they can glue it back together, I can machine a copy.

moldcore · Feb 27, 2020

PCFree50 said:
I picked up an Advance cross-slide rotary table that can give me a little manual operation with the cross-slide
View attachment 279849

Cross slides can be very versatile when used with a standard mill, not a tracer mill. It's not that you can't use it but you need the x and y axis of the mill to cut radius's. I worked for 13 years at a place that had Cross-slide rotary tables on every Bridgeport. I'm curious as to how much you paid for the cross-slide table.

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