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Bridgeport way inspection - potential purchase

Hartkem

Aluminum
Joined
Jun 6, 2019
I’m on the hunt for a used J head Bridgeport since my wife gave me the go ahead to make the purchase. I have a couple Hendey lathes but this will be my first real Mill. New upgraded Budget is 3500-4000. I have considered a few cheaper ones before I realized my expectation of machine condition was beyond what I was wiling to spend so I managed to squeak out some more funds. Anyway, there are three machines I’m interested in some distance away so I’m relying on the sellers to provide pics and information to help me evaluate which ones to really consider. All machines are variable speed 2HP. The first one is 3500 and the seller sent some pics of the ways. You can see the scrap marks lightly visible most of the length it appears. When I zoom in it looks like a little scoring. Second machine from the same seller looks to have excellent ways but he just took it on trade and hasn’t done anything to it. Says I can have it for 3900 as it sits. My Concern is what it may all need at top of my budget. Not looking for a major project. Minor repairs Ok. The last machine from a different seller that’s closing shop down. He seems very truthful and forthcoming about what’s been done to the machine. He says the nut has been split to get backlash of table dials down to .010. Also measured table play .002. States x axis turns free until about 2 inches from Left end then gets a little tighter. Y axis gets noticeably tighter at 1” nearest operator and 2” towards the back. Last bit of information concerns me some. He states “The smudges on the chrome ways indicate that it has been touched up. The procedure is to use a disc sander instead of a scraper. The hard chrome dulls the scraper, you'll typically spend more time sharpening than scraping. The method is the same. Indicate the high spots and grind them gently.“ Sorry for long post. Pictures of
Machine are in order of how I described them.
 

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I couldn’t add pics of last machine due to max of 5

Well, nice of the person to be so honest, but I’d be very cautious of the one they admitted to taking a grinder to!
The other ones look pretty good, is the seller a dealer? Can you run them under power? Take a friend who knows BPs and it should take 10 min to determine the better of them. Unless there is something screwed in the head, it’s looking like the better of the first two is nice.

See if you can get anything included like a Kurt vise? Some collets?

Just looked again, is that a power drawbar and a 52” table? Really clean ways? That one. For sure.
 
Yes the seller of the first two is a dealer. The tilted head machine with power draw bar has clean ways but has not been evaluated by seller. Don’t think he’s willing to evaluate condition for the 3900 price. He made the comment that all cleaned up it would bring 6k. I’ll inquire about checking the head and running under power.

I’m going to make second post showing third machine of the very honest seller
 
Ding Ding!! Door number two! Unless he is hiding something, that’s why bring someone and run it. Even if the head has some problems, short of catastrophic, I’d go for it. ( but I’ve “rebuilt” them, so that’s just me talking)
 








 
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