Tree brand milling machine

There is a Tree brand mill for sale near here. It’s cheap because the owner has no way to load it. I may talk Jenn into letting me go look. I’m trying to think of wats I could load it. I have a cherry picker and small Ford tractor with a loader. Y’all got any ideas? A little research tells me the old tree weighs around 3400

Edited by Thad in AR. - 08 Sep 2018 at 6:39am

Roll back tow truck

Is it the size of this one? If it is you should be able to pick it up with a two ton or larger engine lift and back a trailer or pickup under it. Set it on planks and slide it to where you would chain it down. If it is larger you might need a fork truck or a wrecker. I move my Bridgeport with my fork truck from press to press to do secondary boring. I would never guess it at a ton and a half though,

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Tree-2UV-Milling-Machine/352221637068?hash=item52020ba9cc:g:PO4AAOSw30JbFVMr

Dick L wrote: Probly this one then! That would be a little harder to move and a fork truck would be a better choice. There would have to be a contractor close to the mill that would have a forklift or large loader and would do it cheaper than a wrecker. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Tree-Model-2UVR-42-Table-1-5Hp-220-440V-3Ph-Milling-Machine-W-Kurt-Vise/113156356469?hash=item1a58a4f975:g:b4YAAOSwhOpbT44I

The pics look just like this one in the pic. The owner texted back and his info says 2600 lbs.

Oh, and DickL pointed out something that is real important. whatever you haul with, make sure you put planks under it to spread the load out some

Thad , you can run a three phase motor on single phase if the motor is a 480/ 240 v 3 phase... You wire to the 240 v schematic..  What is needed is a "phase converter"... you connect two of the 3 phase wires to the two hot wires on the 240 v single phase.. and you use a couple capacitors on one of your hot wires and connect to the third wire on the 3 phase motor.. The capacitor throws the voltage a little out of phase and it simulates 3 phases.. You can get about 70% of the motor HP if the capacitors are selected right.. You can build you own converter, but simple way is to buy one prebuilt. I have seen them on e-bay... you choose 3-5-7 HP that matches your mill motor and they build you a box with the correct capacitors to match.. I have an old 20 inch lathe built it 1915 that is powered this way.

In the 1970's a five man tool shop that is was in on a weekly basis ran the shop serviced with 200 amp service 2 phase with a 100 HP 3 phase motor. They used a single phase 110 motor belted to the 100 hp to start the 100 HP motor running on 2 phase before switching power on the 3 phase buss that fed all the machines. No starting capacitors. The shop had five Bridgeport mills, two Reed surface grinders, two Southbend lathes, a shaper, a large radial drill press and a large Cincinnati mill all on 3 phase. I have been in the shop when all five Bridgeport mills were running.


The two hot wires from the service was hooked thru a switch to two wires on the 100 horse motor as well as hooked to two buss terminals. The third terminal on the buss was hooked to the third wire on the 100 hp motor. That was all he had other than the 110 motor belted to the 100hp motor to get it running.

A 3 phase motor will run on 2 phases without a load. When I loose one phase on one of my machines under load it will run until the motor starter kicks off because of over load which needs to be very quickly or the motor will let the smoke out.

Edited by Dick L - 08 Sep 2018 at 5:44pm

Work has a Tree Mill for maintenance.  Pretty well made old mill.  Good you got a box of tooling with it, if it's like ours, it's a little different and kind of obsolete (though you can always find stuff if you look hard enough!)