Why save old machine tools? The answer is at the end.

[Ace-Garageguy]

 

[stavanzer]

Those Machines (and the Know-How to use them) built the foundations of our modern world.

Thanks, Ace!

[bobss396]

I worked in one shop that existed from 1957 to 1992. It was an antiseptically clean model shop. Even the old machines looked and worked like new. There was a full time guy who just did machine maintenance and repair.

I was out of there by early 1986. When the property was sold, most of the big machines went for penny-weight scrap.

There were 2 big LeBlond Regal gap lathes, with the works. Face and dog plates, a variety of big chucks, all kept in custom made boxes. Plus an overhead hoist on a trolley. The chucks were too big for one person to handle.

There was a Van Norman universal mill in showroom condition. That had a big wooden cabinet with all the accessories in it. 

On top of it all, there were spare parts for all of them.

[Ace-Garageguy]

At Ga. Tech in the late 1960s, part of the required curriculum for aspiring mechanical engineers was to actually get in the machine shop and make something.

Not CNC, but on a manual US-made Bridgeport knee-mill and a Cincinnati screw-cutting lathe.

I still have the screw jack I made from a raw iron casting and steel bar stock. Sometimes I even use it.

The point, of course, was to familiarize students with machine-shop operations, to give them a feel for what could be machined because of cutting-tool access limitations, the order machining processes should be done in, and how to design for manufacture...and how to effectively communicate with production people.

In 1995, when I hired a Tech junior in the ME program as an intern in my consulting company, he told me the hands-on work was no longer required, and that many of the fine old machines were sitting outside in the weather. At the time, I had just bought Chinese clones of the old Bridgeport and a good sized lathe, or I would have gone down to GT to see about buying/rescuing some of what was there.

When I see some of the incredibly stupidly designed stuff that comes through the shop on late-model cars, I just shake my head.

I saw it coming.

CAD/CAE/CAM/CNC-machine-programming are all wonderful tools, but they are NOT a substitute for engineers who know and understand the basics...and it shows.

Edited Monday at 04:35 PM by Ace-Garageguy

[Bugatti Fan]

I was brought up using manually operated capstan and centre lathes, milling machines, drilling machines, shapers and so forth as an engineering apprentice. Saw NC and CNC machines gradually being brought into the workplace and adapted to using them over the years. One thing it taught me was by using manually operated machines one got a 'feel' for the materials being used and the limits a machine could be pushed to.

Letting people loose on very expensive CNC machines who don't have any experience of using machines manually is very risky, particularly when they are convinced that they do not need that experience.

Definitely agree with Ace on this issue.  The video made interesting viewing. I can remember a time when just about every machine shop small and large had at least one Bridgeport milling machine !

Edited Monday at 06:45 PM by Bugatti Fan

[TECHMAN]

6 hours ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

 

CAD/CAE/CAM/CNC-machine-programming are all wonderful tools, but they are NOT a substitute for engineers who know and understand the basics...and it shows.

AGREE 100%

DJ

[bobss396]

I got into that shop in 1981, I was transferred from the main facility, I was swapped for someone who was going on nights.

Fresh out of trade school, with 3 months on the job. This shop always gave the newbies tough jobs to see if they were any good. 

Mine was a complex machined block with loads of material removed, thru and tapped holes. Everything was +/- .005".

AND... I had to do it on the Van Norman that had .250" dials, unlike the Bridgeport .200" dials. Without a DRO.

I laid the whole job out with blue dye and a height gauge. But I managed to literally crank it out and it passed inspection.