Finally used my shaper!

[Bret4207]

A little OT, but after 10 years or so I finally used my Atlas 7" shaper on an actual project, not just screwing around learning how it worked. Nothing special, just needed a 1/2"x5/8" key. Started filing and then the little light bulb went on over my head. Tossed the 3/4" square stock in the vise and in no time I had a very workable key.

Little sucker sure works slick.

[redneckdan]

Nice. They had one here on campus in one of the machine shops I worked in my freshman year. The shop foreman had no clue what it was. One of the enterprise teams was calling around trying to find a broach for internal splines that didn't cost more than a years tution. I pulled that sucker out, did a normal service, set up the dividing head and had 'er done within the hour. Foreman was like, "i didn't know that thing actually did anything..."

[elk hunter]

Bret,

The more you use it the more uses you will find for it. You can do exceedingly nice flat work as in bullet mould blocks or breech blocks and breech block slots for single shot actions. Internal and external key ways, splines, contour shaping.

[jmh54738]

FWIW, with my 7" shaper, I cut keyways on the back stroke. When done the normal way, the tool digs in and gouges.
John

[Buckshot]

............Just check out Youtube. Lot's a nifty shaper stuff there. I think it was on the HSM website a couple years ago a guy had a video of a BIG shaper working. They had a screen set up in front to stop the chips. That clapper box must have had a 3/4" wide tool in it. You could see the chip curl up in front, just as red as could be. At the end of each pass that chip would fly off and hit the screen with an actual thump!

............Buckshot

[Marvin S]

What no picture? We had two of them back when I went to Vo-Tec, it was fun to just watch the chips spit out.

[Bret4207]

Pictures? My little remaining pride prevents me from letting the crowd know what a pig stye my garage or gun room are. Between my natural procrastination, the kids, the grandkid, the normal emergencies of farm life and my wifes obsession with filling "my" space with "her" stuff...well, best you remain blissfully ignorant of this miserable wretches condition in that area...

[theperfessor]

Brett, good for you for finally putting your shaper to work. There are just some things that a shaper does better than any other tool.

[El Bango]

OMG I am green with envy,some day I'll luck into one and start building single shot actions

[arjacobson]

I have wanted one of those for years.. Nice find!

[MtGun44]

Hey, Perfessor -

THATS how John Browning intended the 1911 trigger slots to be cut, I'll bet. Remember the
discussion of how to make that cut if you are making your own 1911?

I saw one years ago in metal shop and have never even seen one run, but I at least have
a rough idea how it works. Am I right that a shaper would do those trigger ways real
well?

Bill

[whitey hanson]

If anyone in the Eastern Colorado should want or need a 12 inch shaper not much bigger than a Atlas. I have a nice one. For sale or trade. Whitey
PM or E-mail whanson@plainstel.com

[theperfessor]

Bill -

Yeah, I've got a 7" South Bend, and I'm pretty sure if I had the desire I could figure out how to make the tooling to cut the trigger slots in a 1911.

When I first started my career as a machinist I was assigned to running planers. Very much similar to a shaper except a table reciprocated with the part on it. Single point tools held in a clapper box, etc. With special tooling we cut internal flat surfaces to some some pretty close tolerances, keyways, gear tooth profiles on gear segments, all sorts of things like that. Once we put a complete lathe (16 feet between centers) on the table and recut the bedways.

After enough experiences such as those you learn to be able to cut almost anything with the right tooling.

I'd bet that the 1911 was designed to have the slots broached in production - it would be quicker, easier and more consistently accurate, but as you know custom broaches aren't cheap! I wouldn't be surprised if I learned that the prototypes had the slots cut with a shaper or keyway cutter.

I once saw an add-on tool that would bolt to the lug on the other end of the ram on a Bridgeport type mill that was a powered vertical keyway cutter. You could swing the ram around on the column and cut keyways and slots.

The most recent thing I used my shaper for was prepping some stainless steel Charpy samples for the Engineering Department's material test lab.

[dragonrider]

"I once saw an add-on tool that would bolt to the lug on the other end of the ram on a Bridgeport type mill that was a powered vertical keyway cutter. You could swing the ram around on the column and cut keyways and slots."

That is called an "E" head, I have one on my Bridgeport, paid $100 for it, very handy tool. I use it to cut the extractor slots in the TCR monoblocs I make. It has 4" of stroke. I have been looking for a small shapper for a long time, 7" would be ok, 12 would be better but room in my shop is at a premium.

[Johnk454]

There's an old saying "you can make anything on a shaper except money". Dunno. I have a neat 7" Atlas myself that hasn't seen much use - yet. Very interesting machine with lots of potential in our hobby. One day... perhaps a scratch built falling block.

[Dutchman]

Here's a video of my 7" South Bend in action. Poor video as it was done with my digital camera in video mode.

http://youtu.be/K8fRmlr8Opg

Dutch

[uscra112]

When I first started my career as a machinist I was assigned to running planers. Very much similar to a shaper except a table reciprocated with the part on it.

My first job in the machine tool industry was at a company where they had a planer with a seventy foot table, seven or eight feet wide The old-timers taught me that the planer was not only the best way to cut a machine bed straight, (true - a planer can cut a line straighter than it is), but it also was less likely to warp the work, since the heat of the cutting was distributed end to end, rather than concentrated in one spot as a milling process does. I saw this proved right later on in my career.

Shapers and planers were money-makers in the days when making and maintaining milling cutters was an expensive toolroom proposition. The single point lathe tool was cheap, used very little precious tool steel, was easy to make, and easy to resharpen. I dearly wish I had a planer. Had I room for one, there would be one - they go cheap when they come up for sale at all.

[Brithunter]

Here in the UK a shaper is worth only what it will fetch when weighed in for scrap.

In our workshop is an 18" shaper it has not been used in years. Partly because dad put so much stuff in there you cannot get to it properly. Hopefully after selling three lathes we can rearrange things a bit better.

[Bill*]

What no picture? We had two of them back when I went to Vo-Tec, it was fun to just watch the chips spit out.

Yes, those nice big blue smoking ones that are shaped like a spring! Well, they're only fun till one of them gets stuck in that little indentation where your neck meets your chest
(yes I did and it took off quite a chunk when I instantly brushed it off)
No bleeding BTW, seared to white flesh instantly

[Boz330]

I was in the machinist apprentice program at R.K.LeBlond right before they shut it down and we had to make a set of angled sliding parallel blocks on a shaper. A real project that was pretty difficult.
They did the lathe bed ways on the huge shapers. IIRC there 3 across and I don't remember how many end to end. Once the machine started the operator just sat back and read a magazine or book. The real work was in the set up.

Bob