Industrial Index
January 27th, 2009Deals to be Had?
Anyone heard of Index brand machine tools? Guy in Central Florida has a couple of mills. I tried to look them up on Practicalmachinist, but you can imagine how many posts contain the word “index.” I did see some favorable material. Supposedly, these are better than Bridgeports, but they sell for less. And the company still has parts, and the service is great. Down side: Bridgeport is like the Chevy 350; anything you need for it can be found easily.
Metalmaq in Hialeah has one. Looks like it has seen some hard times: CLICK.
January 27th, 2009 at 3:13 PM
Not so much hard times as sitting, unused and uncared for, in the Miami climate. Surface rust on the ways and gibs is bad, but not a disaster.
Regards,
Ric
January 27th, 2009 at 7:14 PM
Steve,
I’ve seen Index mills, and there’s nothing wrong with them that I know. You might ask about them on the PM BBS, those guys will be familiar with them.
The biggest advantage of a B’Port is just what you said, or as one of your commenters analogized: it’s like a M1911 pistol. Lots of parts and accessories available. Although, the Index has parts available if you need ’em, and most accessories aren’t manufacturer-specific.
January 27th, 2009 at 7:41 PM
The type of machine you’re looking at is called a knee mill. A bridgeport is a knee mill. The premium one nowadays is called a Lagun. Tree used to make an inexpensive CNC one that ran off of 220 single phase. Almost every knee mill made outside the USA has a large M cast into the column. That’s a dead giveaway that it’s a chaiwanese mill. They’re good mills, for the most part. But nothing feels like a real bridgeport.
If you just look for “knee mills” you’ll expand your search. Still, people will call almost anything a knee mill.
Most of the accessories- like DRO, tools, etc. work on just about anything.
January 28th, 2009 at 8:45 AM
I looked at the machine on you link and it doesn’t look like anything that a little paint, steelwool and kerosene won’t fix!
January 28th, 2009 at 8:46 AM
Well, if the outside looks like that, what do the guts look like?
January 28th, 2009 at 10:06 AM
Steve,
Most used machine tools are going to have paint that’s sorta crappy looking. As Ric and Scooter say, that’s not a deal killer. The main thing is the condition of the ways, both ‘X’ and ‘Y’, the ideal is to have a consistent drag from one travel extreme to the other. You’re unlikely to find that in a used mill, but you SHOULD be able to traverse the table in all 4 directions w/o its binding badly at the ends of the travel, yet not have a lot of play in the middle.
Yes, you want good spindle bearings, but a B’Port spindle can be rebuilt for about $300.00. This won’t come close to paying for a way-scraping job.
School machines are often abused, but seldom badly worn. Most of the abuse will be in the form of what I call ‘mongo marks’ in the table, and most of them aren’t serious. Few mills will not have a few, as everyone makes mistakes.
The real biggy is to get an R8 spindle. Like many other defacto standards, it’s not the ‘best’, but it’s certainly the most popular.