My "new" mill

[MrForbes]

Look what I hauled home last week. I found it for $150 on craigslist and managed to be the first guy there with cash. It's a Jet (made in Taiwan) 1980 vintage JVM-840 vertical mill. I've since torn it mostly all apart, and put it back together again. It has some wear, but it looks like it'll be useable. I don't really have much use for a mill around the home shop, but it's been fun working on it, and I should be able to get it making chips for under $350 total. I got some tooling from a friend, and bought a Variable Frequency Drive on ebay for $30 to try. The mill has a one HP three phase motor, the power switch was fried, I think that's why it was removed from service, as the previous owner said it needed a new motor. I checked out the motor itself, it all appears to be ok. The mill weighs about half a ton, so it's not full Bridgeport size, and the table is only 7 x 30"

This may affect our ROV design for the new NURC game Trouble on Ceti-Alpha 3!

[DonRotolo]

I am jealous.

How'd you keep it from tipping over in the truck while driving?

[ChuckDickerson]

Sweet find! I have been searching the local Craig's List ads everyday for years in hopes of a deal like that! I few months ago I found a Bridgeport 2J2 9x42" for $650 on Craig's List and grabbed it. I currently have it torn down and am working on rebuilding it but it is going to need a bunch of work. I'm sure I'm going to have more in it than it is worth when done but the ways are good and I'm sure learning a lot along the way.

Congrats on the great find!

[MrForbes]

I drove very slowly! We forgot to bring tie downs. The mill was bolted to a couple 4x4s about 40" long, so it wasn't quite as precarious as it looks. Fortunately it was only about 2 miles away, and there's not much traffic out here in the sticks.

[MrForbes]

I got the mill running, although it's not quite perfect. I need to spend more money for a bigger VFD, as it will only run about 1200 or so RPM spindle speed with the little 1/2 hp drive connected to the 1 hp motor. At least now I know the motor does indeed work. And now I have a bunch of little aluminum chips all over the floor of my shop.

[Jay H 237]

That was a good find! Even if it turned out to be not worth fixing you could recover most of your purchase price in scrap metal.

Sometimes there are deals out there and you have to be quick to jump on them. Having one now opens up a whole new world of possiblities of what you can do now. Having the room for tools like this is another factor, I've passed on a few things like a lathe due to no space.