Recovering a Cincinnati milling machine

Here are some of the parts that I brought back on the first recovery trip. I took the back seat out of my Jeep Wrangler and loaded all this in. My Jeep's owners manual say that maximum capacity (including passengers) is 800 pounds. I must have had at least 900 pounds. This stuff is HEAVY!

Oh you don't believe me when I say this stuff is heavy? Look at the size of the work table and vise! Just compare their size to the SUV next to them!! This is no bench top machine. The vise alone weighs at least 90 pounds.

In case you still didn't realize how large the components are, this should clear it up. That is a typical 12 FL. OZ. (355 ML) soda can on the vise. This vise weighs more than my bench top drill press!

This photo was taken after the second recovery day. This is the main machine body in the pickup truck. Do you see how massive this is?! The bed is almost filled and the back of the truck is pushed down!

The black pipes are the hoist I brought along to load the truck. But I was lucky because a company was applying asphalt to the seller's driveway area and they loaded the mill into the truck for me with their bobcat (a type of tractor). Saved me a lot of time and effort!

In this photo my homemade lifting gantry is raising the mill up to vertical position. Since the chain hoist was pulling the weight on an angle (rather than lifting the entire machine straight up) the gantry began to lean backward toward the mill body about every 8 inches of lift. So I had to periodically drive the truck forward about a foot at a time to bring the mill closer to the center of the gantry until it was standing upright.

Here is the 900 pound mill body hoisted in the air and the pickup truck driven out from under it. I wish I had this gantry when I unloaded my bandsaw!

There wasn't even a single creaking sound from the gantry. I don't know if the extra support brackets I added were necessary but I think the added strength is worth it. Who needs a human assistant when you've got this sort of power on your squad?!

It may not look like it but the top of the machine where the yellow strap is, is about 7' above the ground. The top of the gantry itself is almost 11' tall!

When I first saw the machine it was covered with no less than 19 POUNDS worth of cast iron shavings. Some of it had been there so many years that the grease and shavings mix were caked together like a hamburger patty, and I had to scrape and pry the mass off with a screwdriver. This is a look inside the knee section and you can see theat the inside of the machine is still loaded with shavings.

The machinist at the shop told me that for about 15 years or so the machine had been set up exclusively for cutting a 1/2" channel in iron castings for one of their customers. That was until the motor blew and the machine sat dormant for however long until I bought it. Aside from that job it sounded to me that the machine received relatively little use. They also had a miller that was twice the size of this one and several large vertical millers. All vintage machinery.

Here's the 3 phase, 1740 RPM, 2 horsepower motor. It's burnt out and needs to be replaced. It's bolted to a large 3/4" thick steel plate which seems to weigh more than the motor itself. This base is probably 49 times stronger than necessary!

I had considered casting a lightweight aluminum plate with reinforcing ribs for the motor mount and use this steel plate to make something useful! Notice the "roll" type pulley on the motor. This machine uses a flat belt.

Here is the miller's arbor. On the left is the Brown & Sharpe #50 taper. The cutter is the water wheel looking thing in the center. I'll be buying more on Ebay. The greasy glove is for size comparison.

Here I've reinstalled the spindle, arbor overarm and overarm bracket. Just so it'll look more like it's supposed to.

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