Heavy metal

When it comes to machinery, it’s hard to beat the machines that were constructed between WWII and the 1960’s. Simple, over built, utilitarian, and manual. No computers, no sensors, not circuit boards and code to crash. Just heavy steel, precision grinding, and lots of oil and grease.

Here are 2 “New” machines we just acquired. A 1961 Bridgeport Series 1 milling machine with a some premium upgrades and a Trumpf&Co. TAS 64 Reciprocating machine with some very useful attachments.

The Bridgeport weighing in at just over 2,000 pounds and the TAS 64 at approximately 4,000 pounds

For those unacquainted with these machines, this is their purpose:

The Bridgeport milling machine is one of the most well rounded tools you will find in a machine/fabrication shop. It’s a great tool for quickly and precisely modifying existing parts, making spacers, accurately removing material while maintaining flatness, making tapered holes for things like ball joint pins or motorcycle fork legs, making custom tools, countersinking hardware, even cutting valve reliefs in the tops of pistons. The list can go on forever.

The Reciprocating machine, often referred to as a “Pullmax” which is just another brand is often thought of as a power hammer. But it’s not. Aside from a ram that operates on an eccentric, that’s where the similarities end. It’s a sheet metal forming machine that conducts its business by quickly, but gradually pressing or punching. This single machine paired with dies that are purchased or made by the operator (often on a milling machine) is capable of forming beads, louvering, shearing, nibbling, circle cutting, forming corrugated panels, punching holes, doming, slotting, tipping edges/flanges in complex curves, hammer forming raised/lowered details in panels and even shrinking sheet metal with the use of thumbnail dies.

While a coach building, restoration, fabrication shop’s tool arsenal is never complete, these two machines are a massive piece towards filling huge voids in that toolbox.