New Hardware

[theperfessor]

Came home from work the other day and look what I found sitting on my worktable! A 12" by 18" two ledge black granite surface plate. Used but in very good shape, it still appears to be very flat with the most minimal amount of chipping here and there.

I gave a friend an old piece of broken machinery, he traded it (for parts) to another guy and ended up with some stuff for his shop and this plate. My friend has a shop but he has an A & P rating and is not really a machinist but more of a mechanic, so he gave the plate to me knowing I would get some use out of it.

Thanks buddy!

[Frank46]

Think you should buy your buddy a few beers. I had a cousin once who worked for a company that did manufacture printing presses. He once told me that they set up these presses on surface plates so as to get all the alignments correct. Plates that size you could get adjusted for the curvature of the earth. Which reminds me, I have a cast iron or steel one that I bought years ago for $20. Guy bought out closing machine shops and had a small shipping container full. He opened the door and said take your pick. Frank

[Longwood]

Came home from work the other day and look what I found sitting on my worktable! A 12" by 18" two ledge black granite surface plate. Used but in very good shape, it still appears to be very flat with the most minimal amount of chipping here and there.

I gave a friend an old piece of broken machinery, he traded it (for parts) to another guy and ended up with some stuff for his shop and this plate. My friend has a shop but he has an A & P rating and is not really a machinist but more of a mechanic, so he gave the plate to me knowing I would get some use out of it.

Thanks buddy!

You won't need it often but, when you do need it.
I do my trigger jobs with one and a little precision vise.
It sure makes it easy to work on the shear.
I saw vise sell on ebay a few days back for about one eighth of what it is worth.

PS,
I worked for a while overhauling machine tools. They had a granite that was 12 feet by 6 feet.
Scraping weys, most monotonous job I ever had.

[W.R.Buchanan]

Keith: I received one once in a simlar manner. Mine was a machine base for a lathe that cut contact lenses. they had several that didn't make the cut.

It has several holes corred thru it and 3-4 female anchors cemented in for bolting the various parts of the machine to it. It was also free!

I made a roll around stand for it as it is about 2'x3'x 5" thick and weighs every bit of 500 lbs.

They are a nice thing to have around and you'll use yours for flatlapping parts most often. I shoot WD40 onto the back of Wet or Dry sandpaper, which holds it in position on the flat.

I have never been one to use the height gage and surface plate method of laying out parts.

I use mine mostly for assembling parts which have to be aligned as they are bolted together.

It also doubles as an available horizontal surface to stack stuff on. Works really well for this as you don't have to worry about it floating away.

Randy

Longwood: a friend got a 8x5x18" thick one from the same place I got mine, and once again for free. It weighed nearly 6000 lbs and took a pretty serious forklift to move around. He used it as a welding fixture to set up and weld items that had to be very close when done. He made frames for my CNC routers on it and the worst one I ever saw was .020 out of square and flat over a 6 foot square! Great things to have around if you have the space but not something you can move easily.

I agree with youur assessment of way scraping. The first time it was cool, after that it is just tedious work.

Randy

[Big Rack]

Years ago at Hardinge in NY I saw a huge profiled surface plate that they called a replicator. Their machine bases were made from gravel and epoxy they call it Harcrete the surface plate was part of the mold. once cured no flex no aging required and a lot of mass.
Pretty accurate we had a standard swiss style lathe (ST25) it would hold a tenth as long as the tooling and bar stock diameter held. I expect the Super Precision lathes were better.
Later I was operating a newer SP lathe with live everything and contouring it was awful to use a weldment for the frame and the spindle would rise and shift to the tail .001 so much for it's supposed temp. compensation.

[Longwood]

I worked for Home Depot for a few months to pay for a new truck.
One customer gave me some nice pieces of granite counter top.
I gave it all away except for a chunk he cut from an antique.
It is only about 12" x 24" but it is about 1 1/2" thick so I use it a lot for doing flat's or when I'm working on my lap or a not so firm bench or table.
I also have a nice piece of Corrian that I use a lot.
Those counter top people have lots of scrap pieces laying around.
If I wanted a nice thick and heavy slab, I would maybe ask around to see if I could get enough free pieces to stack together.

I can't help myself, it seems I have to tinker with everything to try to improve it.
I just got through modifying this keyboard with my Dremel tool and some hotglue so the back space button, the one I use the most, is now way big and hard to miss.

[Longwood]

Years ago at Hardinge in NY I saw a huge profiled surface plate that they called a replicator. Their machine bases were made from gravel and epoxy they call it Harcrete the surface plate was part of the mold. once cured no flex no aging required and a lot of mass.
Pretty accurate we had a standard swiss style lathe (ST25) it would hold a tenth as long as the tooling and bar stock diameter held. I expect the Super Precision lathes were better.
Later I was operating a newer SP lathe with live everything and contouring it was awful to use a weldment for the frame and the spindle would rise and shift to the tail .001 so much for it's supposed temp. compensation.

I worked for a big oil drilling bit company, before a Hughes Lawsuit finally shut them down, that had row upon row of multi chuck multi tool machines. Bullards, Motch Merriweather's etc. etc.
The only Swiss Machine they had was in the tool and die shop. It was very different looking so of course I had to ask. They used it for moving predrilled holes to an exact spot within .00001

[Big Rack]

A Swiss style lathe was originally used by swiss watchmakers think, long skinny parts. Instead of the tooling moving the headstock slides so it's pretty rigid.
At a open house I machined golf tees I could run them without coolant so potential customers could watch. One pass from the point to the head a couple of grooves in the head and six flats milled on head while at the same time the last one cutoff and held by the sub would fire up and make the dish to hold the ball on a ball end mill then eject the finished part into the parts catcher.

On surface plates Woodcraft has a chinese one that they put on sale fairly often seems pretty good for the price.

[429421Cowboy]

I got mine from the marble shop in town when i started leatherworking in 4-H, they used to give us the cutouts for sinks from countertops. Millions of uses for them besides tooling leather!

[Topper]

FYI- That can be very useful for sharpening knives.
Use wet/dry sand paper and clamp it on the stone with two flat pieces of wood, keep the paper wet and don't clean the slur off until you go to the next grit. Watch and keep same angle (unless you want to change it) and push blade across paper away from the cutting edge. I start with 600 grit, by the time you get to 1500 or higher it should be extremely sharp. I then strop blade on smooth leather and that will make it scary sharp .
I have Lanskey and other kits, they just can't compare with the method above if you maintain correct angle.

[Just Duke]

That's real nice.
A lot better that spray contacting a piece of 500 grit to the top of my table saw.

[arjacobson]

Nice!!

[theperfessor]

Appreciate all the ideas of how to use it. I plan to primarily use it to check fixtures and parts for geometric and dimensional information. I don't do a lot of layout so not much use there. The ledges let you clamp pieces down easier with a C-clamp. I need to make a stand that I can set this thing down into and level it up.

[arjacobson]

we used gallons of alcohol cleaning our various surface plates when I worked at the white-farm plant. They had one in the main inspection office that had to be at least 8'x10' and 12" thick. Nice purty color too!!