I live in/own a duplex that has a 2br, a 1br, and my barn. My old tenant was a pack rat and I ended up with a ton of his stuff when he vacated. Here is a gem:
For reference that is a Starrett 3" scale.
I found this pawing through my VERY cluttered basement. I cleaned it out once when the tenant left but tossed a ton of cool and potentially useful stuff in one of the rooms. Somehow this worked it's way out enough to get my attention. Heck I even have a 1960/1970s Oscilloscope in there. So much crap.
I know I can get tooling for this, but what about the hold downs for the table? Approx 1/4" grooves (yes I had my scale out and did not measure the channels). I have the normal sized tooling for my XY table I put on my drillpress but I have never seen them this small.
I figure this thing will be great for making bushings and spool pieces and all sorts of other little goodies.
Fun stuff!
I had a couple of sherlines that were retrofitted for CNC. They are nice little machines. Small cuts and small tools but good precision and nice machines. Nice score!
Well I cleaned it up and lubed up the slides and threads today. I made a couple hold down screws and plates. Then I proceeded to try milling something random. I really need a manual for this as I do not know how to operate the chuck and in the last picture you will see the head is not very in right.
The last pic shows my WTF as I was machining that chunk of plate. It was cutting kind of goofy and I thought that it was my hold downs bringing the suck. Nope.
Anyone knows how to operate that chuck please let me know. I need to search for a manual.
I am drooling over making 914 shifter bushings out of delrin or bronze.
Mr_Asa
PowerDork
9/26/21 5:45 p.m.
Man, even one of those would be helpful with so much of what I'm doing.
In reply to Mr_Asa :
Seriously. A total score for me!
Huge mini mill day for me!
I fixed the head mount and figured out how to use the 3 jaw chuck. Then I said "now that I know what I am looking for let's hit the basement again...
I found the berkeleying lathe table and an indexing 4 jaw chuck!!!!!
3 jaw and 4 jaw are currently soaking in penetrating oil and the horizontal table is functioning and greased.
So stoked!
So mrs. preach and I have joked for years since the guy moved out that he was dang close to a unibomber. Here is the bomb? gear he was making with the indexing head:
Excellent find(s)! This looks a little more attainable for a lot of people than a Bridgeport if only due to footprint.
Awesome find! Those are cool little machines.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
I am not sure about that. Space is a thing, IF I had the space there'd be a small milling machine instead of a drill press with an XY table. This set up in mint. I am lucky to have stumbled into it. I think I'd take a decent bridgeport for $1k-1.5k over these little guys.
By no means do I discount these gifts...
Went on a work trip for a week and came back to this stuff. I decided to look for more and found some good stuff.
After an hour of digging (next post will show you the piles) I found this:
More fixtures for the mill and lathe, belts for the motor, quite a few inserts, holders, end mills, etc.
I also found these three spring type collets but I have no idea what they are for. If the Hive does not know I will ask a really real machinist at work in the morning:
So, as threatened, here is some of what I have to dig through:
There is legit 2 rooms full of E36 M3 I need to go through as I cannot just toss all of it into a dumpster and forget about it. I am glad I did not just yard it out even though I'd love the room.
Besides the above green drill head I found:
A valve lathe that needs some work:
Some Nintendo stuff, but the console is trashed:
And some "bomb" stuff. Remember we called him the unibomber? Just some electronic crap that I will never have a use for, but shows this guys versatility:
I have a Sherline mill that doesn't get used very often, but also doesn't take up much space. They are far less capable and no more precise than a full size mill, but they sure are handy to have around when you start needing things that don't exist.
In reply to New York Nick :
That would not surprise me in the least.
There are electronic boxes and stuff near this stuff.
Slick.
ShawnG
UltimaDork
10/14/21 9:22 p.m.
In the machine's defense, a fly cutter is probably the worst way to machine anything.
They work but there's far better things out there to do the same job.
I have the same set of three Grizzly flycutters at work and they're pretty terrible. I tried to use one once and promptly bought a big shell mill from McMaster.
11GTCS
Dork
10/14/21 9:33 p.m.
In reply to preach (fs) :
Boy that’s a lot of New Years boxes of cool stuff... 
What an outstanding score! Man, I really wanted one of those when I was racing RC boats. They are great little machines. They were just too expensive.
I did end up buying a Taig lathe and a Harbor Freight Mini Mill. You will be surprised at what you can cut on a tiny machine. I machined a set of pins for a Ford backhoe on my Taig. What would have taken about 15 minutes on my South Bend took hours on the Taig, but it got the job done.
