11 replies to this topic

[Phil Hackett]

A nearby auction was yesterday... I don't have the *need* for more equipment or the space to put it. BUT there are regrets during and afterwards on equipment that I didn't bid on and these are the most regretful. The surface grinder selling for $75!.... The Bridgeport sold for $300. (winning bids don't include a 18% auctioneers premium and sales tax... and then there's the moving expense which will most likely be more than the equipment cost.)

 

Then there a full-sized lathe that sold for less than s Sherline lathe. $300....

 

I did score on some Cat 40 tooling so the sadness is somewhat lessened....

 

 

 

[Dave Crevie]

If you didn't have a chance to inspect the machines in person, I wouldn't feel too bad. No telling what condition the ways and screws are in. And having someone go and look at them for you might not help. We all have different opinions on how much wear is acceptable. They might only be worth scrap value.

[Phil Hackett]

I picked up the tooling and this shop was probably on the way to failure for years. It is/was located on Alameda and 132nd street in Compton (in case you guys want to Google Earth it). The shop probably had it's heyday in the 1950s and 1960s. It's basically a corrugated metal building with a couple of wood and plaster wall additions. I'm guessing the lack of work and the property values closed this shop. My guess, also, the shop hasn't been active for months if not over a year. There's this dust/grunge that settles on machinery if not used for a long time.

 

I checked out the surface grinder and it didn't seem too bad. For $75 (guessing $400 delivered with auctioneers premium and sales tax) I can tolerate some wear and funkiness. Surface grinders are very simple machines with very simple geometry so fixing them isn't a major pain (unlike mills).

 

There were scrap machines.

[Dave Crevie]

Surface grinder ways tend to hollow out in the center, which will leave a humpback in the center of whatever you are grinding. Fixable of course, but should be checked by auto-columator after they are reworked. I don't trust my eyesight, nor should anyone else. Way back, I rebuilt a German Abbawerk grinder, which was the best auto-feed surface grinder I ever used. Everyone else thought that,too. So it was running 24/7. After 11 years it finally started running some slope on the long parts it was grinding. I replaced the longitudinal (x-axis) ways, and scraped in the table. Checked .0005 over 30 inches.

[Rob Voska]

Just had custom pistons made for work.  Guy calls and they no longer have a bridge port or way to drill compound angles.  I had to put the wrist pin oil holes in at home on my Bridgeport.  

[Dave Crevie]

Just had custom pistons made for work.  Guy calls and they no longer have a bridge port or way to drill compound angles.  I had to put the wrist pin oil holes in at home on my Bridgeport.

Chances are this shop has gone totally CNC, and doesn't want to tie up a machine for such a simple job. Ideally, all the drilling operations should have been done in one set-up in a 5-axis machine.

[chaparrAL]

Here I thought I stole my surface grinder for $400! 

[Dave Crevie]

The condition of the machine will dictate the price. A $100.00 machine might need $1000.00 in repairs to make it usable. At CWM we had a Pratt and Whitney jig border that was built in 1919, was used in war materials manufacturing for two wars, and had been rebuilt many times. It was just as accurate as the smaller, newer version. Along the way, chrome ways and a DRO were added, and the flat belt drive updated to Gilmer belt.
When it went up for auction, I was blown away by the interest shown by the bidders. It hammered sold at $18,000.

[Phil Hackett]

It's true: cheap machinery is often cheap for a reason, especially auction machines. In the case of that surface grinder $75 was a good buy. It is a new enough machine to have parts that would be desirable for people rebuilding a similar (Reid) machine, at least.

 

I have a Bridgeport (a *REAL* one, not Harig-branded) surface grinder. It's very unique, machinery guys, when they see it, freak out because it's so rare... back to my point: I bought the machine at auction back in the 80s and if you were to perform a precision-audit on it it would most likely fail badly. Very badly. However, for the small tools ground on it (generally 1/2" or smaller) it does its job well. I wasn't looking for tenths of thousandths over 18" (it's a 6 x 18 machine). When I needed it to take off .0001" on a part it did it.... but the part wasn't very long.

 

The $75 grinder was pretty grungy and looked like it (the whole shop looked like...) it wasn't used for a long time. Like I said previously, there's a type of dust/grunge that settles on machinery that sits for a long time...the grinder didn't have excessive backlash on the slides, the motions were smooth lock-to-lock, and the spindle spun smoothly but it was going to need a long hot cleaning session...

 

As for old machinery, pre-WWII (<--- that's not an eleven!) iron is considered by many rebuilders to be the best. It's supposed to be more stable, have better wear, be more massive and scrape better than post-WWII (<---again, not an eleven!) iron.

[Dave Crevie]

That is why I say, when starting a new business, it is smarter to go with used equipment, and replace, or rebuild it, as business ramps up.

[Rob Voska]

Saw a Sodic wire EDM sell for $350.  They opened the doors to the room and everything inside went as 1 lot.  Extra wire, filters, desk and chair, computer and software, tooling, chiller and EDM.  Condition looked good.  No one wanted to pay to have it moved and it was too big for my garage.

[Phil Hackett]

There was an auction at the McCulloch Motors R&D facility where the auction was going long and the auctioneer started bundling rooms for bids. The other guys I was with and I were asleep when this one particular room sold for $50 and probably had $50,000 worth of hardware, fasteners, cabinets, wire, cables, raw materials, you name it it was in there...it would have taken 3-4 days with 2-3 guys to unload that room.