Gorton 1-22 mill finds a new home

If this belongs in a different forum, feel free to move it.

I'm finally upgrading from my....erm....Jet mill/drill, and settled on a Gorton 1-22 Mastermil after lots of research and reading up about them on the forum here. Found this one on ebay in the LA area and had it shipped here to NE Oregon.



Issues that I know about are the X and Z motors don't work (which I suspect is a power supply issue), and the spindle is noisy. From what I've read, the bearing issue may well be in the drive pulley system instead. Picked up a used American Rotary RPC off ebay as well and hope to have power to the mill next week. Currently the mill is sitting at a friends commercial machine shop until I can arrange a forklift here.

While bearings may be an expensive issue, I'm calling this a "forever mill", a phrase used by others here for equipment that they never intend to sell, so I'm fine with spending a little money where necessary.

It even comes with a rather old but functional EG&G DRO.

Hi Jeremy,

Congratulations!

We have a 1962 vintage 1-22 plus a mid eighties Bridgeport 2J. The Bridgeport is like a happy meal toy by comparison.

I hope you'll be very happy with it.

V

This one is serial number 44350 which I gather is early/mid 60's vintage.

One step closer to the shop. Just waiting on a buddy to show up with his "telehandler" forklift. We should be able to extend it in to the shop a good distance for a temporary home.

Mill is safely in the shop now.

Issues I know about:
Transmission doesn't shift. The knob for it doesn't rotate the shaft and the shaft spins freely. Broken dowel pin inside?
Both power feed motors don't work. Suspect something with the DC power supply.

Still waiting on the box of collets and knee handle. They were part of the auction but didn't arrive with the mill. Will have to keep pushing the seller for them.

I had one of those (late 60's vintage) and am sorry I sold it, Gorton was excellent quality that some people didn't mind paying for. If I remember you have to have the quill feed switch in the proper position for the table feed to work, they will not work simultaneously. I hope that helps.
Dan

Decent looking old mill.

I used to run a Famco 120, and couldn't help but notice some close similarities in the head castings, handwheels/cranks, and the power feed tucked in under the table between your mill and that Famco.

As far as turret mills, I've ran Bridgys, Wells-Index, Famco, and Lagun. The sturdiest of them all I have to say was the Famco. Definitely heavier than the Bridgy by a bunch. The power feed setup they had was pretty slick compared to the box at the end of the table.

The quill feed had it's own separate motor. It never got broken by people feeding drills too big or too hard like the Bridgy's did.

The only limitation I saw with that Famco compared with the Bridgy, W-I, Lagun was the inability to nod the head. Only swiveled relative to X.

Anyone know if Gorton and Famco are somehow related?

Anyway, nice find!

Sorry to interrupt the threads original topic. Just a quick question.

Bill, the 120 I ran was a 1966 model. Even had the original manual with it dated the same year. Is it possible that Gorton supplied Famco with mills that were re-badged?

I don't have 3 phase hooked up yet, but started working on some of the obvious issues.

The gear box knob floated in and out and didn't do anything. A snap-ring on the shaft the knob rotates on had popped out of a groove causing the small gear to float out of mesh. Easy fix.

Pulled the front driven pulley apart and cleaned up a bit of rust on the faces. There was a nice mat of fibers under the pulley. A mouse obvious made a home there. Used a flashlight and small mirror to check things out. No rust at all under the pulley so think I lucked out there.

Things I've noticed in the electrical cabinet...oversize fuse shoved in to the fuse holder clips on the DC board, a few scorch marks where wires obviously came loose and touched contacts they shouldn't, re-routing three phase wiring away from the terminal strip and directly to the main disconnect.







DC schematic. Pretty simple, really.

Shopping at Platt Electric tomorrow. Will be picking up L15-30P male and female twist-lock plugs plus 20ft of 4 conductor 10 gauge stranded cable to run from the phase converter to the mill, and 8 gauge cable plus CS636x series twist-lock plug and socket for the fuse panel to RPC connection, along with a 40A circuit breaker. Am I missing anything else? Keep in mind this is only temporary until it's parked in the shop addition.

The motor on the mill is rated at 2-1/2HP three phase, for reference.

Progress!

Wired up the used American Rotary 7.5HP RPC I bought off ebay after picking up some supplies. In general, it runs well, but occasionally makes a somewhat high pitch sound. If I turn it off and back on, it goes away. Pulled the rotor out but it's not contacting anything. Not sure what the problem is. Bearings feel ok. This RPC is open and fan cooled and felt fairly warm to the touch, but not so much that you'd burn yourself. Is that normal? Will check temp with a temp gun.

Someone has run stranded wire in to the same terminals as solid core on the main disconnect, and those stranded wires were loose because of unequal pressure. Resolved that and the spindle motor fired up. In the ad, the spindle was described as noisy. When I'm listening to it, it really sounds like the motor to me, and not the spindle. That'd be a much cheaper thing to fix.

For those of you who are either intimately familiar with these Gorton 1-22's, or currently own one, would you do me a favor and look inside the brake handle/starter button box and tell me if I have an eccentric sleeve or cam missing? There is nothing to trip the switch that's in there. The handle itself is eccentric, but I assume the proper cover would not let the switch stick out far enough to run on it. Mine doesn't have the cover and someone got creative with cardboard.



If you own one that is the same vintage as mine (early/mid 1960's), does this wiring cabinet look similar to yours as far as wire routing? Someone has routed around some things. I'd be interested in finding a complete wiring schematic if available. The only one I've seen is one just for the DC board.



Connections on the DC board. Curious why there are different colored jumpers on it. A couple go to spots on the board. Hack job?
If I try to run the feed motors at all, the 15A fuse blows on the board mounted on the transformer. Something's not right there.



DRO works. Anyone have a manual for it, or able to tell me what the switches with the missing caps do?





RPC's temporary home.

Looks like a great machine to fix up and use. It is great you know so much about the electrical and can understand the schematics too.
You have a good skill there and so you are able to find treasure like this machine and fix it and make money with it.

Started poking around on the DC board a bit. I'm not an electronics guru by any stretch, so will need help here.

I had put an over-rated fuse in the fuse holder by accident, and this is the result when I turned on one of the feed motor controls.



That trace leads from the downstream side of the fuse (main power) to a diode and also to a wire that goes to a larger diode on the heatsink. Connections 22 and 23 here:





The large stud-mount diode shows zero continuity one way, and North of 1.5Mohm the other way. Seems a bit odd, though I don't see how that would constitute a short circuit.

I have a hard time believing that the heatsink was OEM. The holes that the screws should slide through are threaded instead of smooth. Seems odd.

Yes I know the fuse is completely wrong and I need a "Midget" fuse.

Found two schematics at vintagemachinery that will be helpful.

Repaired the trace on the PC board. Looking over the schematic, I notice that there is actually a wire that goes from #2 to the SCR 2N685, but there is no 1.5k resistor inline. The schematic shows one. Anyone want to look at the schematic up the page a ways and tell me if the missing resistor would act as a current limiter of some sort?

If I remove the wire in question from terminal #2 and tape it off just to see if the machine will turn on with the PCB fuse installed without blowing the fuse on the transformer, does that have the potential to hurt anything? Right now, if the 25A fuse is plugged in to the PCB and the main power is turned on, the 15A fuse on the large transformer pops instantly. Pull that 25A from the PCB and the machine turns on fine, albeit with no DC.

Meh...didn't feel like waiting.

I disconnected the black wire that went from terminal #2 on the PCB to the connection shared with the 100k resistor and SCR at the top of the wiring schematic. Now all the fuses stay alive when the power is turned on. The DC is still dead, but I think something with that subsystem on the PCB is shorting out. The fact that the 1.5K resistor shown in the schematic is missing can't be helping things. The diagram also shows an "externally wired" S01DA12AC and I don't see any sign of something like that in the entire electrical cabinet (found a picture of a Westinghouse one on ebay).

Schematic again:


Wire I'm talking about is the black one clamped in terminal #2:

Care to guess if a 5W resistor would survive in that circuit path? Rat Shack has them locally.

Uhm...yeah.

I've mapped out the whole PCB. Another mystery is the large blue capacitor up at the top of the board just below the fuse. It's not on the schematic and the markings have been wiped off other than a GE logo. If any of you guys have one of these mills, mind looking at the board in yours and let me know if you can spot any markings on that capacitor?

I'm going to replace everything...just trying to track down parts now.

Jeremy said:

I've mapped out the whole PCB. Another mystery is the large blue capacitor up at the top of the board just below the fuse. It's not on the schematic and the markings have been wiped off other than a GE logo. If any of you guys have one of these mills, mind looking at the board in yours and let me know if you can spot any markings on that capacitor?

I'm going to replace everything...just trying to track down parts now.

Click to expand...

The blue item with a GE logo is a surge suppressor. It is on the schematic. Replace it with a MOV.