New Mill! Removing the table?

[Doc Nickel]

Okay, my new, still-crated Grizzly G4027 vertical mill just arrived, and is due to be delivered in a few hours.

I'll be lift-gating it onto the shop apron, or possibly right into the car bay of the shop, if possible.

However, I'm going to have to partially dismantle it in order to get it into the machinery portion of the shop. The millhead and ram are relatively easy, but I've never taken a table off.

Any tips to do it easy and right?

Doc.

[Spin Doctor]

Item one if you've got a digital camera get it out and take a step by step record of the disassembly procedure.

If these come apart anything like a BP
1) Remove the hand cranks
2) Remove the bearing locknuts on the screw
3) Unbolt the bearing housings from the table and remove. They should just slip off easily
4) Place an indicator base on the saddle and take a reading of the clearance on the gib.
5) Remove the table gib from the saddle.
6) The table should be able to slide right off
7) Remove the screw and nut assembly from the cross tree that is bolted to the saddle.
8) Reassembly is in reverse order. Taking the reading on the gib clearance will give you a good starting point for where to set the gib on reassembly. One thing I would do when the table is off is measure the table dove tail over pins to see if there is any taper end to end. If there is that will mean the gib will have to be set too loose.

[SGW]

Based on my experience taking the table off my Jet mill, it won't be difficult. Just remember that the first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts, and you should be fine. SpinDoctor gives a good summary. The Grizzly may not be even that complicated.

[Doc Nickel]

It was actually very easy. I removed the powerfeed from the right end- hopefully I can keep all the spacers and shims in order- and just unscrewed the table. Took three people to "catch" it, but it came right off.

I removed the ram, millhead and column-cap dovetail as one unit with an engine crane. Then with the bare column and knee, it was a fairly simple job to put it on a palletjack and roll it right into the machine shop.

Quick opinions: very nice finish to the table and saddle ways, brilliant finish on the leadscrews, nice and huge leadscrew adjusters, plenty of oil and grease where oil and grease need to be, castings look good, paint is very nice.

My helpers had to leave on business for a few hours so I'm takin' a break. I'll have a writeup on the Griz in the next day or two.

Doc.

[Techtchr]

Doc,
I've heard of JIT (just in time)manufacturing. But JIT mill disassembly? Nothing like planning ahead. What if the answer to your original question was don't do it, the table will never come off?

I had a machinist friend who decided to put his home shop in the basement of his 80 yr old house. He had two Turret lathes, a mill, and many other toys. He excavated the back wall of the basement, removed the stone wall, slid the machines in place and put all the stones, and dirt back. When he sold the equipment when he retired for good part of the deal was that the new owner had to get them out without taking the wall back out. The guy took apart all of these machines piece by piece.

Glad everything went well.

Matt

[Thrud]

doc
Any tips to do it easy and right?

Yeah, hire a machinery rigger and get the hell out of the way - beer and BBQ go nice while watching!

[John Stevenson]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Thrud:
Yeah, hire a machinery rigger and get the hell out of the way - beer and BBQ go nice while watching!

[/B]</font>

Thrud,
What for a little G4027??
Shame on you man, where's your sense of adventure? Your inquistive nature to see what's inside, how it works and if it breaks later I'll know how to fix it.

Couple of yeras ago I was offered a Bridgport , fully equiped and working for not a lot of money. Only drawback, it was in a corner of a shop wth some large machines all round, no way out in one piece.
Also had to be moved out of hours and they worked 24/7.
Went in on New Years day at 10.00 am just me, a folding engine crane and my van.
Took the head off, the top arm, the bed, and the knee.
Loaded each part onto a pallet truck and slide it past the machines into the van.
back home by 3.00 and I didn't rush.
Took two days to get it back together due to cleaning and adjusting bits.

John S.

[Doc Nickel]

Wasn't in the cards. Wasn't a matter of cost, it was a matter of getting it into the shop. As it was, the whole preocess, from the truck pulling in- and hitting the house- to getting the thing set and reassembled in the little shop, was better than ten hours and involved, at times, up to five people.

As it is, I have it back in place, fairly level- the floor is nowhere near level- fully reassembled, and I picked up the parts to run the new 230V service from the box. The electrician is coming over tomorrow- once I have power, I'll tram it in, and start checking table parallelism and all that.

The manual isn't impressing me- the pix and diagrams are okay, but the little checkoff sheet about tolerances show a lot of ".014" and ".021s" and such. It's still better than my worn-out old JET, but I'm hoping some of that is sloppy measuring techniques, and not an actual ten thou of spindle runout.

Doc.

[4lb.Nevada]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Doc Nickel:
It's still better than my worn-out old JET</font>

If that machine is lonely, and is in need of a kind and loving home, I know where it can come to live
Charles

[Thrud]

John
For all I know the Grizzly iw 10,000 lbs. They refuse to sell to Canadians so I refuse to waste my time looking at their site.

Besides, if I took it apart and looked at it I might have some S.P.I.T. angst. I tend to be a little too anal as far as tool qaulity goes and only force myself to S.P.I.T. out of downright desparation.

I would rather go without than get hosed, because I never get kissed.

And when I get screwed I expect my kiss!

[Doc Nickel]

Update:
It's in, it's down, it's levelled and trammed.

I can't thinkm of a better way to spend three solid days.

Here's a quickie page I put up about it, if anyone's interested in the up-close and personal on one of these Taiwanese mills:

http://www.docsmachine.com/machineshop/newmill1.html

Charles- Sorry, the old JET is gonna get a workover. New belts, new bearings, a good cleaning, I might even spring for some ACME stock and build some new leadscrews. Depends on what parts JET has floating around for the thing, and how much they cost.

Doc.