Sometimes it pays to be at the right place at the right time. Like Pfreen on his tool score I came upon a similar situation. A local Lotus owner flagged a Facebook post advertising a S2 frame for free. Not being able to resist a free Europa part, I went down to take a look at the frame. The photo shows a pristine S2 frame with very little rust, no damage and most of the red primer. According to the owner, a race/vintage/fabrication shop, if no one claimed the frame, it was going into the full dumpster outside. It needed to be gone since he had to move out of the shop within the next two days. As were talking, I noticed a Bridgeport vertical mill and power shear standing right in the middle of his empty shop. He noticed me looking at it and asked me if I was interested and said he'll sell it for $2500. As a bonus he'll throw the power metal shear in for free. I didn't think too long about it and a couple of days later the mill was in my garage. The mill transport from the race shop to my garage is a distance of around 40 miles. I ran into second bit of good luck. The heavy machinery mover that the race shop owner hired to move the mill was also a Bridgeport mill owner. During our discussion on the cost of the move, I offered him the power shear for free since I had no room for it in my garage. I believe he had quoted a price of $400 for moving the mill but offered to move the mill for free in exchange for the shear. The guy was good. He managed to move the 2000 pound mill off his flatbed transport with a forklift and finally into my small work space in the corner of my garage with dollies and a pry bar. That Bridgeport is huge.
The first hurdle I ran across is that the Bridgeport was wired for 208VAC three phase power. Since I had the garage already wired for 240VAC I just had to figure out how to get three phase power to the mill. Viewing a lot of Youtube videos, I decided that my best choice was to go with the Variable Frequency Drives (VFD) sized for my power requirement. This is my current situation. Until I get the mill powered up I won't know what condition the rest of the mill is in. Visually, it appears to be in very good condition. One good add on to the mill is a very early form of CNC control panel. Again, without power I won't know if it actually works. IF it doesn't, the manufacturer is no longer in business but there is a company that still sells parts for the electronics so I may not totally be SOL. The worse case is that I operate the mill on full manual like the olden times.
When I picked the mill up, I was not actively looking for one. For the previous three months, I was taking classes on machining with my local Makers Space. I had just taken a four hour orientation class on the manual vertical mill. At the conclusion of the class, I was still far from being able to operate the mill solo. The class was on just getting familiar with the controls and we did a couple of operation on removing metal. With my personal full size mill, I can learn on my own without fear of damaging someone elses $40K piece of equipment. I'll post progress reports in case anyone is interested in machining
