So this is how it happens...

[Pete O]

I've been complaining about how second-hand machinery never has all it's accessories, like missing change gears and the like. Keeping my eyes open for a shaper at present and I found one (way too big for my purposes) on an industrial online auction site. 30" jobbie. I did notice that, in keeping with the trend, the vice is missing.

  shaper 30.jpg (Size: 64.41 KB / Downloads: 196)
Looking at the other pieces of machinery for sale on the same site, there's a big old milling machine and sitting on the mill table is- you guessed it- one humongous shaper vice.

  shaper vice.jpg (Size: 80.4 KB / Downloads: 195)

Actually I'd love a shaper that big but I doubt that my RPC would run it.

[f350ca]

Bigger is better Pete. I'd be surprised if that shaper had more than a 5 horse motor on it. My 18 inch has a 2 or 3 and it never slows down.
Incidentally my shaper came without a vice.

[Dr Stan]

One needs to remember these companies are run by sales personnel and usually have little to no background in machining/metal working.  So putting a shaper vice on a mill would be OK in their world since its just a vice right?

[Pete O]

No indication on the website of what HP the motor is, 5hp is about the most i think i could expect out of my phase converter. I looked at a 24" shaper earlier this year that had a 8hp motor, I assumed this would have something around that size. Guess it could always be fitted with something smaller, i have a couple of 3hp 415v motors on the shelf but not sure if that would be up to it?

You'd think the sales people would get someone with some knowledge of the product to sort out what goes with what when they are doing a job lot- this is an engineering company of some sort that has closed down- but they seem to take the path of least resistance and just sell it as it stands.

[PixMan]

You may be expecting too much, Pete. If the company is liquidating then the people there probably don't know a thing about the equipment, nor care. The machinery is left in the way of selling or leasing a commercial building for other purposes, and anyone there likely wants to move on to the next liquidation.

The big vise may have been on the floor somewhere so to get rid of it, someone threw it on the nearest machine. It's all speculation on my part, but my point is that under the conditions of a building needing to be cleared out, it's often a case of "get it out of here in the next week or call the scrapper to haul it away."

In one instance a number of years ago, I had a similar situation. The company I worked for was buying a CNC horizontal machining center that was in good shape, and it had an auxiliary 4th axis rotary table sitting a few feet away. That was being sold separately, but it was OE to the machine we were buying. It took some negotiation (a $100 in cash worked amazing) but we were able to convince the seller to include it with the machine. This was a liquidator hired to just get whatever they could as long as the building was emptied.

[Rickabilly]

Hello All,
Shapers are funny things, it seems that there's little co-relation between the size of the shaper and the size of the electric motor beyond the simple big shaper = big motor It seems with Lathes n such the motor size for a given turning capacity are well prescribed.
If you have a close look at the shaper photo above you'll see a diddy little electric motor hanging off of the back of it I'd be surprised if it was more than 4Hp.

You see; peculiar to shapers the big ones must reciprocate much, much slower than the littl'uns (due to the limitations of the strength of the materials and the inertial loads generated throwing the ram back n forth) which means despite the larger capacity often the metal removal rate remains low and so too does the horsepower required to drive it.

Sorry, but none of that'll help you get a decent sized shaper vise with your purchase, on the up side the only machines you'll need to make a suitably sized shaper vise is your lathe and the shaper that the vise will be fitted to.

Best regards Rick

[Pete O]

(07-12-2016, 07:10 AM)PixMan Wrote: You may be expecting too much, Pete.

Perhaps not expecting, just expressing a little annoyance. Having an incurable penchant for old stuff, I guess I have only myself to blame for the fact that my shop is full of equipment with missing accessories. Someone no doubt picked up a nice shaper there, never to meet it's original vice again!

Interesting info about the shaper motor hp Rick, I will bear that in mind as I keep searching for one.
I had to pass up 2 possibilities in the past fortnight as my tandem trailer was being sandblasted, had no way to collect. I'm sure the right machine will come up.