Free CNC Mill in Lompoc, CA (with strings attached)...

OK, I have gotten authorization from the War Department to give this mill away. There are some strings:
--This goes only to a decent human being. Don't contact me if you are a fringe player and don't sign up for this forum just thinking you are going to score a free mill. 
--You cannot re-sell it. Of course, I'm not gonna police your mill-selling exploits after you haul this thing away, but don't be a douche and try to profit off my brother-in-law's death. 
--You gotta move it, which is no small task. 

Here's the back story:
My brother-in-law recently died and left a garage full of machining tools. We have liquidated just about everything except for this. He used it to make parts for telescopes and had a nice little business going. You would use it, of course, to make cheaty parts for your janky race car. My brother-in-law would have approved. 

I do not know a lot about the mill. Just what he told me before he died. He also had a few details up on a website. The milling machine is a 3 axis bed mill that was integrated by Webb. It's a Topwell 96 chassis (Taiwan) and it has a DynaPath Delta 40 CNC controller. The mill has a 5hp motor. 

Mill is in operational condition although it may need new bearings in the head. New bearings come with it, although we have not laid our hands on them yet. My brother-in-law crashed the head into the table on two occasions. He was concerned that he bent the shaft; however, he later said the shaft was fine. I dunno. 

Must be moved from a garage. Will require a fork lift and a big truck or trailer. No tooling comes with it. Just the mill.

--bb

Some more info and pictures taken just yesterday:

The mill will also come with a 10hp rotary converter and some minimal tooling that is specific to that mill, including one vice. 

We are getting quotes on moving it locally. It is located in Lompoc, but once we get it out of the garage and loaded in a truck, it would be easy to move to other towns in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties...or anywhere in SoCal, I suppose.

Newer pictures:

Cat 40 tooling?  I'm on the wrong side of the country for this.  Hope it finds a good home.

Sorry to hear about your brother-in-law.

I'm sorry about your Brother-in-law.

How quickly do you need to have that moved?

Do you have equipment to load it on a truck or trailer?

I'd love to have it, but its a bit too much for a GRM Express, methinks.

Good luck with it, sorry about your BIL

Kendall_Jones said:

Cat 40 tooling?

Sorry to hear about your brother-in-law.

Update: my engineering/amateur machinist nerd friend says he thinks it is CAT 40 tooling, but that we would have to measure some collets to be sure. 

__________

Thanks for your condolences.

I'm not sure about the tooling. I will ask a few friends who have seen and started up the machine. They may know. 

--bb

APEowner said:

I'm sorry about your Brother-in-law.

How quickly do you need to have that moved?

Do you have equipment to load it on a truck or trailer?

Thanks for your kind words.

The house is going to be sold in probate. That means the courts will have to approve the sale. We are certainly a month away from listing it, probably more. The the sales process for a probate sale will take two months, depending on the courts. Maybe more. So, it could be there for the rest of the year. It is weighing heavily on the executor. He is pretty stressed about getting it gone and won't rest easily until he sees it rolling down the street. 

We do not have equipment to load it onto a trailer. You could rent a forklift locally. Bear in mind, it is in a garage. Not a lot of room for equipment to move around. The garage is at the top of a steep, short driveway. Which also presents some challenges. But my brother-in-law got it in there; it can be moved out as well. The movers used a fork lift to get it off the trailer and into the garage; they then used small, heavy dollies to schooch it across the garage floor into position. 

Paging Keith Tanner...

You keep posting about your desire to start machining; grab this and jump off into the deep end!

Here's a link to the website my brother-in-law had up with info on the mill:

https://sites.google.com/site/davestelescope/webb-cnc-mill

--bb

Really sorry to hear about the BIL, I hope the tools carry on making cool stuff.

BTW - Whoever buys it, if you're taking commissions I'd be happy to send you some files and some money for them to be cut.

In reply to motobill :

looking at the website it shows photos of it setup and running in the previous owners shop , 

was it hooked up to power and running in your BIL garage ?

Those are a 40 taper not CAT 40.

zordak said:

Those are a 40 taper not CAT 40.

I know nothing about how this works. The little bit of research I did on the Googles made me more confused; however, my amateur machinist friend came back with this: 

I'm still confused, but I hope this makes sense to somebody. 

--bb

californiamilleghia said:

In reply to motobill :

looking at the website it shows photos of it setup and running in the previous owners shop , 

was it hooked up to power and running in your BIL garage ?

Yes. It can be powered up and run where it is sitting right now. 

accordionfolder said:

Really sorry to hear about the BIL, I hope the tools carry on making cool stuff.

Exactly my hope for this thing, too. Thanks.

I could put this to work.  Just a bit of a drive.

I'll send you a pm to chat.

Thinkkker said:

I could put this to work.  Just a bit of a drive.

 

I'll send you a pm to chat.

Got your email and replied with my phone number. Happy to provide some additional details. Looking forward to hearing more about your plans. Call when you can. 
 

--Bill

Just a quick update with some additional information:

I am taking inquiries in the order in which they come in, and I'm following each inquiry to its logical conclusion. So, it will take some time to sort through everything. I will certainly communicate with you if you have questions. Happy to talk to anybody who is interested. 

The most common question I'm getting is, "How much does it weigh?" My bathroom scale goes up to #300. It weights more than that. The next most commonly asked questions is, "How big is it?" It's big. Here are the dimensions as measured by my other brother-in-law:

Make: Webb
Model:  TW-96
manufacture date: 1997  MFG#867127

dimensions:
   68" deep - including computer cabinets & chip skirt (semi-best case)
      81" if the monitor is swung forward (worst, but most realistic, case for transport, not use)

   68" wide - w/ motor still attached to the mill bed (semi-worst case, worst case when monitor swung wide))
      52" wide @ the computer cabinets
      approx 52" w/ mill bed centered and table motor removed (best case)

   99" high - w/ motors attached and the mill head near the top (worst case)
      82" high w/ mill head lowered and top motor removed (best case)

HTH,

Bill

I feel like this should be continued even though it's on the for sale forum....

In the midst of the drive home, I'll post a story when I get back.  

In reply to Thinkkker :

Awesome!

Sit Rep....

In Tuscon, so far so good.  Could push to make it in way early morning, but I think progress will slow a bit from slated as going through TX will be below speed limits.

Made it back in this morning about 9am.  Buddy was up and drove a double stint from about 10-5 this morning.  I drove the remaining last stint home.

A quick pic under the porteche.  I'll try to sit and write up a report thus eve..  finished cleaning up the garage some and got the Birkin on rollers to mo e for the forklift unload in the AM.

Glad you and the new toy made the trip safely. Hope the unload goes well... we're looking fwd. to seeing some chips!

First and formost, I want to thank motobill and the family.  Everyone was great!  I cant express the greatfulness on this one.  Hopefully I can get it all figured out now!

I first contacted after Bill posted this a couple of days after I looked.  I knew this was a drive, and I would more than likely have to make it, which would REALLY need to have at least a 3 day weekend.  After I sent the initial message and spoke, the more local interested party bowed out.  So, I was up if I wanted.   Being the unfathomably smart person I am, I agreed. 

From this point, it took almost a month to pin down a date.  Work has been crazy, and I finally had a small window I could run with.

I wasnt horribly keen to take this trip on my own.  The wife discussed going with me over the time the kids were visiting Nana before school kicked off. Her allowing Covid to invade her body and take her down for a few days kinda made that idea go away.  Kids came back home too, and a 24hour one way trip with 4 kids to turn around and come back, just didnt seem optimal. One of our friends who is between real jobs, Derek, said, "Ill drive out there!"  He is also the friend who we have helping to sort my garage out and sort my stuff.  So, we were set, other than a trailer.

I sent a message to a friend on the Lemon's team and he reached out one of the members on it.  I am certain that we will use this for something on a lemons car.  Maybe just a sweet hood ornament, but something. Got a text going to discuss and Marcus *trailer owner* agreed to let us use it. The timing of the trip worked before a run up to the Colorado race, so I had this covered now too.

I lined up a loading company in Lompoc, Louie's Central Coast Movers, and verified the date from all for this past Friday.  In doing all of this, I still did not have a way to unload.  At least other than the reverse brake method, which did not seem to be optimal.  The week I left, we got some references for Able Machinery Movers.  Their pricing was pretty great, and I am sure the fact that I have an 8' garage door and they could drive a forklift in didn't hurt.  So getting it on and off the trailer was all set.

In speaking with my boss, we had more stuff shift so he gave the go ahead to get out a little earlier.  So Derek and I hatched the plan to roll out Wed at noon.  I had put a box of straps in the bed of the truck, a tool box of random tools, and some 4x4 blocks I had.  Plenty for a good time.

I had a couple of morning calls, and did some other work stuff Wednesday.  I packed up all the "needed" things and put it in the truck.  Derek pulled in around noon and we got on the road.  There was nothing of consequence on the way out.  I drove the first 2 stints which put us just outside of El Paso. 

Funny enough, once you clear San Antonio and are on the way on I-10, your GPS will tell you this....

Honestly, it was showing over 1500 miles when it first did this, but the thing kept trying to route us to go the northern route through Albequerque on I-40.  I refused to do that and add in 200 miles and a couple hours.

This was the sunset in the Mountains in TX.

We fueled up again and swapped seats.  This was near midnight *actually 11 with time change* and I was pretty much done.  We pushed into New Mexico, which was a chore.  I-10 was closed for some bridge construction.  So we sat for about 30 minutes.  Not too bad, but we sat.  Made it through though.

After this was taken, Derek decided he needed to stop for a restroom break.  I decided the back seat sounded better to get sleep in.  So I crawled in the back. 

Over the next couple of hours, I think we stopped 2-3 times.  Each time Derek said he needed to take a restroom break.  I didn't track the boy and was waking up enough to check on things in general.  So, in reality, I think he was pretty tired too and done.  He did a solid 2.5-3 hours of driving and got us just over the border to Arizona.  I got in some solid Z's so I took up the mantle again. 

I refueled the truck, grabbed a drink and snack, and settled back in for a nice drive.  I could make out "THE THING!" stop as I rolled by there and made a note to show Derek this on the way back *keep this in mind*.

As we came to Tuscon, I had a simply the bestest idea.  I had wanted to see the Salton Sea.  I knew it was a little extra time, but we were scheduled to get in just after lunch anyways.  So, being that I was awake, I made the call to hit I-8 and head out there.  I drove for about 3 hours. Then I got hit with the tireds. 

I pulled over about 30 miles outside of Yuma, I just couldnt quite do it.  Derek woke and drove into California then. 

This is getting long, I lost some stuff earlier, so I will add some more later.