Is there any love for metal shapers on here?

[jstewart]

I've got a few........................ok 5 of them

This is the one I wanted all along, of course it was the last one I found.

 

[jstewart]

My old Columbia, information is non-existent, it is marked for 30 inches

 

[mgwin]

Wow! NICE!!! Would take a warehouse to house all them babies! If I had space like that, it would be full of yellow & white stuff!

 

[IHinIN]

I learned to run a shaper in high school machine trades class. I haven’t seen one since my employer got rid of theirs about 20 yrs ago. Do you use yours or just collect them?

 

[mfrade]

Love the Rhythm and sounds. Hypnotic. it's said with a shaper you can make anything.. except money. No matter, I'd love to have a small one in my shop.

 

[wh cc guy]

Years ago we would ride one like a horse. Dumb things kids used to do.

 

[RAllison]

My shop just tore ours down for scrap,this is all that's left...I couldn't talk him out of keeping it intact

 

[Neil Mullins]

 

[Neil Mullins]

 

[RAllison]

Now that's nice Neil!!!

 

[Neil Mullins]

Now that's nice Neil!!!

Use them regularly!

 

[Neil Mullins]

 

[jstewart]

I learned to run a shaper in high school machine trades class. I haven’t seen one since my employer got rid of theirs about 20 yrs ago. Do you use yours or just collect them?

I claim that an old vocational teacher haunts me. Had an old Swede instructor always thwart my efforts to do things on the mill, by saying: "You can do that on a shaper" Fast forward a few years, I am trying to get some machines together and since I am paying for cutters, a shaper sounded real good. Of course in the days before internet, about all I ran across was an Atlas, cut a lot of keyways on it, all I had for years.
Finally started finding them later on, adding a belt line ATW 15 inch, then a Lutter & Geis 16 inch, then came the Columbia 30 inch, a Gould & Eberhardt 16 inch of Navy origins, very late model (1964) and now the Cincinnati 24 Heavy ................................and in the process of getting the Cincinnati, I was offered a Rockford 24...................................

I use the ATW the most, have used the Lutter & Geis (but it is in a different building, not as handy) The Columbia and Cincinnati are a bit much for my power capacity, but I'm well into upgrading that. The Gould & Eberhardt has all the bells and whistles, Navy influence I guess, will have to get the tool feed figured out and the tool lifter is not all there, the electric clutch and brake were screwed up when I got it, getting it sorted out. The schematic in the panel is faded to white..............fortunately. Vintage Machinery has Cincinnati manual reprints online that look to be the same setup for clutch and brake. Amazing how much wiring they put into making this thing work, again, Navy influence?

 

[Stu]

Neat stuff. In the 80s I worked with an old machinist, he had a functional model from the 1908 Colombian Expo. About the size of a sewing machine. It worked!

 

[jstewart]

If anybody ever finds one of these, let me know..................

 

[dfrisk]

They are "The right tool for some jobs". But I've never worked where we needed that job done. Closest thing was cutting a 2 inch wide by 1 inch deep keyway into a 2000 to 5000+ pound alloy steel casting. THE BOSS found a "key-seater", forget the brand, similar to those shapers but pulled the cutter vertically, cutting on the down stroke. As the size of our machines increased size and weight of the parts increased. We made automobile scrap metal shredding rotors, replacement rotors for both Hammermill brand and Newell, and we made a rotor for Proler Corp, scrap metal processing company on an "as needed" basis. We built one and shipped it to their Terminal Island, CA scrap yard. Their New Jersey yard just happened to be right across the Hudson River from the World Trade Center and got all the ferrous scrap from that. The rotor for Terminal Island weighed around 85,000#, 4 axle semi-tractor and 5 axle trailer and all kinds of special permits. The Hammermill & Newell rotors weighed 40,000 to 48,000#. We designed and built a 104"x98" Super-Duty Newell rotor for Auto-Shred of Detroit, to grind up a mountain of Detroit Diesel city bus engines from scrapped busses. Took a year for the mountain to disappear.
We had a tool&die shop make parts for us on DeVlig Jig Mills, generally they did good work but occasionally they would screw up. I kept a constant stream of work going down the street a mile to Williams & White Co. They had done a bit of work for us years before I started at this company, but I had crazy high demand for machined parts and they were slow on their own work so I loaded them up! I was told we needed a "Rotor a Week" to make our shipping Dollar commitments. I've got a picture of 4, FOUR rotors loaded and shipped on ONE DAY. An 85,000# Pooler rotor, a 40,000# Newell, and two 45,000# Newell, and there was 3-4 truckloads of shredder mill wear parts shipped that day too.
The alloy steel sand casting foundry we were a division of is still in business, but the scrap shredder rotor & shredder mill business is gone. In fact, the Moline, Ill end of the new Interstate 74 Mississippi River bridge is built right where our building was located.
Last machine operation on a 16" diameter and 15 feet long rotor shaft was cutting a 2.000" keyway most of the length of the shaft. A 20" diameter shaft got a 3.000" keyway. And Yes, we reconditioned used rotors too. I swear they took on some jobs to try to monopolize my time doing 5 to 10% of my work and I'd drive the 4-5 miles down to work Sunday afternoon after the NASCAR race.

 

[jstewart]

"You can make anything on a shaper except money".......................

 

[dschwandt]

Love the Rhythm and sounds. Hypnotic. it's said with a shaper you can make anything.. except money. No matter, I'd love to have a small one in my shop.

Mike....
Is this one small enough??
Pic from a machinist friend in OR that just finished it.
Plan is to power it w/a miniature Case steam engine to display one day at the WMSTR Rollag show

 

[RAllison]

Now that's pretty neat Dave. The guys here in the shop got a kick out of that!

 

[IHinIN]

Here’s a 7” Ammco for sale. Even the belt guards had style back then.

https://lostcreekmachine.com/product/shaper-metal-ammco-7-item-c024/