Originally Posted by moparx
as a machinist, i'm always interested in equipment like that.
thanks for the description of that machine.
when i first started my career, the company was Rockwell International. there was an in-floor Bullard vertical mill with a 5 foot table we used to machine 6 foot long gas meter bodies used in the field pipe lines.
these bodies were stood on end, one end machined, then inverted to machine the other.
after a few years, that machine was retired, and an above ground Bullard vertical mill was used until around 1978 or so, when that operation was switched over to the first of the large CNC machines were bought to machine large castings.
beer


So you know the appeal of those big iron machines..
At the auction I was outbid on a nice above ground Bullard.
frown

To create the below floor sump pit, I was pretty worried about jack-hammering the concrete shop floor next to other lathes, drill dresses and horizontal milling machines.

But it was suggested that since we had core drilling rigs of various sizes that we just bring in the smallest such rig and drill a circle of small diameter hole through the concrete steel rebar reinforced floor to create the below floor pit. This worked with almost no vibration and the grouting under the existing machines did not crack or show any damage. The tungsten carbide core drill bits bits cut through what rebar happened to be in the way and we lifted out the concrete circle of floor in one piece.

20 years later by myself I had to create a hole in the un-reinforced concrete floor of a house on slab to get at a leaking copper water line below. I used a half inch hammer drill to make a much smaller circle of holes through the concrete. The leak was caused where a copper city water line that touched a galvanized steel conduit with 240 volt wires inside. This created the shocking situation of seeing clear water squirting out of the elbow cover plate below the electric company meter!