The clapper. When I first ran the thing, I thought it was supposed to go clap! clap! clap! Chips were yellow and all was good. Or so I thought. What would happen is the slapping of the clapper would cause the tool head to drop, dig in and ruin stuff. The ram was a blur. That isn't the way to run it.
The ram. It moves faster on the return, and that's when the table feeds. It will cross over the previous tool path and hop up a little when it hits the edge. That happens in the last inch or so of the return stroke. I'd just as soon it did that in free air rather than over the workpiece.
As to the table sagging (rising?), my first impulse was to hit it with the cutter but at this stage of learning that probably isn't a good idea. I am curious as to what is causing it though.
My block of steel - the sides came within .004" of being parallel and I managed to kill 2 hours doing it. Tempting to walk away but there's no limit switch to turn it off, so I watched.
I got the feed to do just one click at a time - measured the travel and the chipload is .007" at that setting, about double what I'd like to have seen. The max is probably a half-inch. I've no idea how a guy would utilize it though. Seems like an iffy way to make serrations, if that's the plan.
Well, now I'm ready for an *Advanced* Dummy's Guide.
I put a few more hours on the thing, this time with a "shear tool" and a couple more paper shims under the vice.. I'm very pleased with the results! The 2x2x6" steel block came true within .002" with an impressive surface finish. Silky smooth; no swirlies, no washboards (well, just a shadow, looks the same pitch as the bull gear), and best of all, almost burr free. This thing is no goat, but a big friendly dog that I swear is wagging its tail whenever I turn the overhead lights on.
Does anyone have any pictures of internal tool holders and tools? I have some ideas, but tried and true saves time and there's a black hole on the internet for such things. Thanks!
These are the holders that were made for my Lewis shaper. The Lewis was only sold as a casting kit, in two levels of pre-work, so all accessories were made by the finisher.
As you can see, the holder slips into the clapper from behind, same as the lantern toolholder, and is clamped by the big nut. The hex flats on the shafts will aid in this tightening. The short holder has two setscrews, while the long one is a collet type, with sawcuts to form the jaws. Both take the 1/2" boring bar, which is sized for 1/4" HSS bits.
This should give you a few ideas to make toolholders to suit your shaper.
Mike
If you can't get one, make one.
Hawkeye, proud to be a member of MetalworkingFun Forum since Jan 2013.
The setscrew type looks like a good one to start with. I'm guessing that a tool intended to make small square or hex holes might be made of O2, or a bit of HSS soldered to the end of some CRS.
I simply machined a holder for a boring bar HSS perpendicular to the bar ground to whatever form shape required for the job.
also added a DRO to the downfeed (I can see that). What I did is similar to Hawkeyes reply .
When treading into the unknown on thin ice go slowly with light cuts. dont worry any machine will talk to you, thats my take
on machining "look listen and feel"...........
sam
big job, proud to be a member of MetalworkingFun since Jun 2012.
10-04-2014, 09:08 AM (This post was last modified: 10-04-2014, 09:14 AM by Sunset Machine.)
The machine came with a huge version of that, holding a 2" boring bar about 20" long. It's so badly out of balance that the clapper needs to bolted down solid, and even then it hangs down so far that it looks like a sure way to break something, and there are signs that it did! A smaller one should work fine and easy to make, but I'm leaning towards a poker-style like Hawkeye's. Who knows - maybe it can be geared to a divider and generate internal splines or something.
I haven't had time to go out to the shop in weeks, but the last time I toyed with the shaper it was to make an internal corner. I found the limitation of having such a large vice - the tool just barely clears the vice when the jaws are 90 degrees to the ram. There's no room for overhanging work.
It's been almost a year. Winter set in, the garage got cold and I said goodnight to the crew.
Okay, spring came and the planer got hired. I used the shaper to make a few tee-nuts for it. Six weeks steady on the planer over the last couple of months has shown me that HSS shaper/planer tooling is a leetle different than lathe tooling. Top rake being slightly negative has a big impact on longevity - we don't want the very tip striking first, but would rather use a downward slicing effect rather than lifting. Too much of that and the heavy chip is directed against the work, scratching it.
Might be easier to visualize by considering a lathe. Looking at the tool tip while on center to the work, you'll notice that the top slopes back and downward towards the operator and to the right. With a shaper/planer, that slope goes UP. And there is some serious side rake, like 35 degrees.
Might be interesting to point out that this is the natural way a bit will go when stoned up sharp as work progresses. The tendency is to stone the top of the dull tip rather than the entire edge. One good reason zero rake tool holders are better - the rake is nearly perfect and just gets better in use. Lathe holders need the tool tip knocked down almost level from the get go.
Oddball stuff apparently. Both seem to be from a time before they went into full production, based on what I can glean from the Cope's book and patent lookups.
Now there's a tip. For the life of me couldn't figure out how to change the stroke on the shaper. Then I got smart and looked up the patent - and there was a full set of instructions and parts from 1906.
