08-06-2017, 08:00 AM
I was attempting to square a fairly large chunk of stock on the shaper yesterday and having a frustrating time as the inside of the vice was not parallel to the ram stroke; I put a 6" parallel across the vice jaws and ran an indicator across it and found about .055" of fall. This afternoon I decided to find out where the error was and make it good.
Started off by swinging the vice 180 degrees on it's swivel base, got exactly the same amount of error in the same direction. Good news, the old shaper vice was well made.
I removed the vice and laid the parallel directly on the table, got .055" in 6" with the outer end of the table sagging, no big surprise.
I removed, cleaned and adjusted the square gib on the cross slide, reduced the sag to .010" over the 6" parallel, much better but still not going to get anything square. So, flushed with my recent success in dressing the mag chuck on my surface grinder, I decided it was time to dress the shaper table.
I set the crossfeed to maximum and took a pass that cut about .005" off the highest section, just to get my bearings. Another pass at .010" d.o.c. looked like it was getting close, so I decreased the feed rate to one pawl per pass, i.e. the finest feed, and took a cut at .005", unfortunately it didn't quite get to the end of the table on the left-front corner so I sped up the cross feed to finish that pass.
Decreased the crossfeed rate again and took another pass at .005", this time it cut over the entire surface.
I cranked it manually across the T-slots to save some time, counted the strokes on the second section of the surface, 195 strokes at 18 strokes a minute, 5 sections to the surface, somewhere around 1,000 strokes per fine pass. Glad it's a machine that you can sit and watch and not have to do this by hand like the surface grinder.
Nice to get all the ugly dings out of the table as well as trueing it up, this old photo shows a bit of how ugly the table had got.
Won't know for sure just how successful this was until I remount the vice and get back to that block, can't see why it shouldn't be good though.
Started off by swinging the vice 180 degrees on it's swivel base, got exactly the same amount of error in the same direction. Good news, the old shaper vice was well made.
I removed the vice and laid the parallel directly on the table, got .055" in 6" with the outer end of the table sagging, no big surprise.
I removed, cleaned and adjusted the square gib on the cross slide, reduced the sag to .010" over the 6" parallel, much better but still not going to get anything square. So, flushed with my recent success in dressing the mag chuck on my surface grinder, I decided it was time to dress the shaper table.
I set the crossfeed to maximum and took a pass that cut about .005" off the highest section, just to get my bearings. Another pass at .010" d.o.c. looked like it was getting close, so I decreased the feed rate to one pawl per pass, i.e. the finest feed, and took a cut at .005", unfortunately it didn't quite get to the end of the table on the left-front corner so I sped up the cross feed to finish that pass.
Decreased the crossfeed rate again and took another pass at .005", this time it cut over the entire surface.
I cranked it manually across the T-slots to save some time, counted the strokes on the second section of the surface, 195 strokes at 18 strokes a minute, 5 sections to the surface, somewhere around 1,000 strokes per fine pass. Glad it's a machine that you can sit and watch and not have to do this by hand like the surface grinder.
Nice to get all the ugly dings out of the table as well as trueing it up, this old photo shows a bit of how ugly the table had got.
Won't know for sure just how successful this was until I remount the vice and get back to that block, can't see why it shouldn't be good though.
Lathe (n); a machine tool used in the production of milling machine components.
Milling Machine (n); a machine tool used in the production of lathe components.
Milling Machine (n); a machine tool used in the production of lathe components.