Why do some Bridgeports have two table locks?

[Jack Burton]

I saw two old Bridgeport mills which looked very similar in size and features. One of them had two longitudinal table locks as opposed to the usual one. Why?

[machintek]

Two are better than one.

George

[beone]

cuz some were going to New York?

[Bpt Service]

In the 1980's many copies of the standard Bridgeport Mill started to appear on the scene. At that time Bridgeport had just dropped most of their distributors and went to a direct office format. The distributors got together and brought in the "Supermax". There was also the "Alliant" that gave Bridgeport some high competition. Bridgeport bought one of each of these machines to see how they were made and to also see if there were any other features being used that "enhanced" those products. The double table and double knee locks were taken from those machines and incorporated into the Bridgeport. I saw these machines in the Bridgeport R&D department when they reverse engineered them.