Milling Machine Restoration

Join me in my machine shop for the Bridgeport restoration. Ok so it’s not technically a Bridgeport mill, but it is a vertical milling machine based on the Bridgeport design. Nevertheless, this is a used milling machine and is long overdue for a serious cleaning and adjustment before I can make any chips. First step of this mill restoration was to get everything to a clean slate by doing a thorough machine rust removal as well as scraping away all the sludge embedded with metal chips. With all of the mill ways clean I could then perform both the mill gib adjustment as well as reduce the backlash in the lead screw mechanism. After everything was running smoothly I did the final step of mill tramming where I square the mill spindle to the table using a dial test indicator. And since I intend to use a precision milling vise on my first few projects I went ahead and mounted and squared one up to the table as well.