1963 Gorton 9J Tracemaster restoration....maybe

akreuzer · Sep 17, 2020

Hey all, I am new to the forum and generally new to machining. I recently had the opportunity to purchase a 1963 Gorton 9J Trace-Master from a friend....and I did it.

from what i know it was in full operation until December of 2017 and has sat since....surface rust is more the present but all in all seems to be still in mostly good shape...so at this time I want to clean it up and get it back as operational as possible but I have a few questions for anyone that has experience with Gortons/9J's/or trace-masters.

1)If I want to clean up and repaint the unit does anyone know of the color grey that Gorton used? also what type of paint have you used on your mill? has it held up well?

2)the hydraulics on this unit are HUGE! is this machine a tracer or bust or is there a way to disconnect the hydraulics and use as a manual mill?

3)DRO? has anyone hooked up a DRO to an old Gorton 9J or similar? if so what kind did you use?

4)We had currently pulled the motor as it was the only way to get into its location so I plan to do a general clean up on it any maintenance items i should do while its off?

5)Anything I should inspect extra thoroughly?

let me know any help is much appreciated!

Thanks
Alex

4GSR · Sep 20, 2020

My family has owned three 9-J mills over the years. None with the tracing attachment. I have seen one with a tracing attachment and the way Gorton designed them, they cannot be used as a manual mill easily without doing a lot of changing out of parts and stuff. As for what color Gorton used to paint the mills when they left the factory, Ours had three shades of gray. Paint it any color you want. My preference is Rustoleum Smoke gray. Good luck on your find. Ken

dalmatiangirl61 · Sep 20, 2020

Congrats on your new toy! I know nothing about the tracers, there is a vid on YT of a guy running one, it looks like a pretty cool tool for re-creating odd shaped parts if you only do onesies and twosies, anything more and cnc is probably the way to go, but I bet I could learn to run a tracer faster than I could learn to write code

.

Just brought home a Gorton 1-22 (plain vertical mill), I am looking at the dro's at dro pros dot com, they have some affordable units, with warranty and replacement parts should you need them. There is a vid on YT of a guy installing a DRO on a Gorton, his model has oil cups on back of table that were in the way, I would have used some elbows and tubing to retain those, he did not.

For your motor, if any doubt about bearings maybe replace them before re-installing?

Lets see some pics!

4GSR · Sep 20, 2020

On installing a digital readout on the mill, on the one we had, we installed Mytotyo digital readouts because at the time, it was the only one affordable that we could get. The X-axis scale was mounted on the backside of the table. We made blocks that mounted on the backside of the table and the scale mounted on it. Then on top of that was a piece of 1/8" x 3" wide flat bar that provided protection to the scale. We also re-piped the Gits oil cup to one end of the table, to make it easier to fill with oil.
The Y-Axis scale, was a little more complicated on it's mount. We cut out a piece of 1/2" thick 1018 CD flat bar about 8" wide which mounted on the left end of the saddle or cross slide under the table. The scale was mounted on this and a mount on top of the gear box attached to the reader head. This was the only way we found useful that worked without doing major changes to what was there.

Hope this helps. Ken

akreuzer · Sep 23, 2020

Photo's

Thank you all for your help! I have attached some photos....wondering what you all think!

4GSR · Sep 23, 2020

Yep, that looks like the one I saw years back.

I think you will find that the rod tied to the cylinder on the X-Axis table travel will only have about 6" screw travel. The rest is hydraulic travel. Not sure how the Y-axis travel is setup, probably the same. The Z-axis travel is hydraulically too with a minimum of screw travel.
I don't know if you are going to leave it like it is and use it as a duplicator or convert it to a manual mill? One good thing, it's all hooked up to run on 230V instead of 460V. That means the two speed motor doesn't have to be rewound or replaced.

Keep up updated on this old mill.

Ken

dalmatiangirl61 · Sep 23, 2020

Is that at its old location, or did you already get it home and wired up? Looks like it needs lots of cleaning, I find the purple stuff works great for cleaning old dry oil, just spray and wipe, if you let it set too long it will soften and remove paint. For rust, if its heavy, small parts get removed and soaked in evaporust, large parts like table I scrape with razor blades.

akreuzer · Sep 28, 2020

@dalmatiangirl61
Yes, this is at its old location, we have since moved it...the motor is now off and i believe will be the firs thing that we will clean up.

akreuzer · Sep 28, 2020

@4GSR
Our hope is to do a conversion to a manual mill...hoping that we can preserve the hydrolics and tracing components incase someone later on wants to put them back on....at the current time they are just taking up too much space.

unless there is a market for tacers that i dont know about where i could work out a trade...

4GSR · Sep 30, 2020

akreuzer said:
@4GSR
Our hope is to do a conversion to a manual mill...hoping that we can preserve the hydrolics and tracing components incase someone later on wants to put them back on....at the current time they are just taking up too much space.

unless there is a market for tacers that i dont know about where i could work out a trade...

The 3-D tracer valve, if it is in good shape and not all crudded up, is about the only thing of any value worth saving and selling. The rest of it is pretty much junk. The hydraulic pump and tank could be used for any hydraulic application where you need a small system. I'm sure you could sell it all as a package if you find someone to take it off your hands. Don't expect big dollars for this stuff. Ken

Armaas · Aug 5, 2022

akreuzer said:
Hey all, I am new to the forum and generally new to machining. I recently had the opportunity to purchase a 1963 Gorton 9J Trace-Master from a friend....and I did it.

from what i know it was in full operation until December of 2017 and has sat since....surface rust is more the present but all in all seems to be still in mostly good shape...so at this time I want to clean it up and get it back as operational as possible but I have a few questions for anyone that has experience with Gortons/9J's/or trace-masters.

1)If I want to clean up and repaint the unit does anyone know of the color grey that Gorton used? also what type of paint have you used on your mill? has it held up well?

2)the hydraulics on this unit are HUGE! is this machine a tracer or bust or is there a way to disconnect the hydraulics and use as a manual mill?

3)DRO? has anyone hooked up a DRO to an old Gorton 9J or similar? if so what kind did you use?

4)We had currently pulled the motor as it was the only way to get into its location so I plan to do a general clean up on it any maintenance items i should do while its off?

5)Anything I should inspect extra thoroughly?

let me know any help is much appreciated!

Thanks
Alex

Hey Alex, you still out there? I recently pulled my 9-J tracer out of mothballs after 8 years, started looking around, and found your post.
Here’s a couple shots just because.

Alex Maas

akreuzer said:
Hey all, I am new to the forum and generally new to machining. I recently had the opportunity to purchase a 1963 Gorton 9J Trace-Master from a friend....and I did it.

from what i know it was in full operation until December of 2017 and has sat since....surface rust is more the present but all in all seems to be still in mostly good shape...so at this time I want to clean it up and get it back as operational as possible but I have a few questions for anyone that has experience with Gortons/9J's/or trace-masters.

1)If I want to clean up and repaint the unit does anyone know of the color grey that Gorton used? also what type of paint have you used on your mill? has it held up well?

2)the hydraulics on this unit are HUGE! is this machine a tracer or bust or is there a way to disconnect the hydraulics and use as a manual mill?

3)DRO? has anyone hooked up a DRO to an old Gorton 9J or similar? if so what kind did you use?

4)We had currently pulled the motor as it was the only way to get into its location so I plan to do a general clean up on it any maintenance items i should do while its off?

5)Anything I should inspect extra thoroughly?

let me know any help is much appreciated!

Thanks
Alex

Hey Alex,

I just pulled my Gorton 9-J tracer out of mothballs after 8 years and started looking around for others and found your post, you still have that thing? Here’s a couple pics of mine. She’s an oddball old dinosaur but runs like a dream.
Alex Maas

https://imgur.com/k4dngOg

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