Once you have translated the patent description of operation language, seems to be a rule that such descriptions shall be totally incomprehensible, its fairly obvious what's going on.

Designed for making punches comprising a stout shaped projection to make a hole extending from a larger parent bar.

When you have the thing set to slotting mode it runs as a normal slotter with the tool cutting on the downstroke and angling back on the upstroke to drag over the work without cutting. Just like a normal shaper.

Ordinarily shaper and slotting tools use a clapper box to permit this angle away from the work with a pivot a bit above the tool holder.

The device described in the patent appears to have the tool fixed in a simple rotating shaft running in trunnions. Which behaves in pretty much the same way as a clapper box when in slotting mode. Not the normal way of doing things as a clapper box has a much more advantageous distribution of forces enabling much heavier cuts to be taken.

The radius mode is especially suitable for making punches. It produces a curve blending the working part of the punch with the parent material. A sharp corner or roughly formed join is a stress raiser making the puch weaker and likely to break.

In radius mode the main part of the punch being made is cut using a straight downwards stroke, just as in slotting mode. The cam rotates the toolholder rotates during the last part of the stroke taking the tool away from the work leaving a radius at the end where the shaped punch joins the parent bar. Having the tool in a rotating shaft carried in trunnions lets the tool swing through 90° giving a clean radius between the punch and parent material. The actual radius being set by the projection of the tool tip relative to the centre of the trunnions in which the carrier shaft rotates.

The rotating shaft appears to take a standard piece of square tool steel. Lord knows what the thing you have is intended to do.

The diagrams in the patent are pretty good so it ought to be possible to figure out the relative orientations of parts.

The design isn't quite as clever as it seems because there are some severe restrictions on work size and shapes if the beast is to work as designed. In particular cuts have to be quite light or the tool will be forced out of cut. Significantly less versatile than the standard breed but what it does do it does well.

Clive

Edited By Clive Foster on 09/12/2022 20:00:00

Andrew

I don't think that particular style of shaper / slotter would be very good at cutting internal keyways. The geometrical limitations of a rotating tool carrier rather than a clapper box would seem to seriously limit its useful stroke.

Jan

I had another go at reading the patent.

It seems that the important part about the radius cutting capability comes at the end of the (approximately) 200 word sentence describing claim 1 :-

"responsive to said continued movement of said driving member to rotate said tool holder in a direction forwardly and away from the workpiece to make an arcuate cut."

Translated into more normal English "the tool rotates away from the main, straight, cut as it comes to the end of the stroke."

Sharpening the tool is going to be tricky because, unless I've completely mis-construed the geometry, the tool is horizontal during the initial straight cut with the lower face leading. So the sharp edge is on the bottom. When the tool swings away from the straight cut there needs to be enough clearance behind the cutting edge to avoid the curved face being cut.

Essentially the same problem as getting enough bottom clearance on a boring tool in a small hole.

The result would seem to be, by shaper standards, a rather weak tool.

Clive

Edited By Clive Foster on 09/12/2022 22:58:33

Jan

If you are using the radius capability you will need a short piece of tool steel held directly in the rotating shaft as shown in the patent drawings. I imagine the slot matches a (then?) standard imperial size so it can be relatively securely held by the grub screw.

For simple slotting I guess some sort of offset holder will be needed to put the holding shaft rotating axis in a similar position relative to the tool tip as the common clapper box system. On a normal shaper the clapper box pivot is significantly behind the tool tip position. Maybe up to a couple of inches on my Elliot 10M depending on tool size. I'm not familiar with vertical slotters but I imagine the geometry is similar.

Somewhere in one of my books there is a discussion of the engineering reasons for this arrangement.

The simple grub screw appears much less secure than the hefty bolt usually found on shaper tool posts.

I imagine tooling of similar shape to that used on the Bridgeport E head would be needed. As the E head is relatively common in home shop enviroments some information can be gleaned from the internet. Here are some nice pictures of the E head clearly showing how the clapper box is arranged **LINK**

https://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/threads/bridgeport-e-head-or-shaper-head-help.136483/

Its clear that the actual tool tip is offset relative to the clapper box pivot. I imagine that a dog leg tool holder could be made to replicate that geometry. Round shank with a flat on the tool to take a grub screw worked for Bridgeport so should be fine on yours. The real Victoria tooling is probably different but geometry must have been similar.

Clive

In the text for the US patent it clearly states that the unit can be used for simple slotting. Essentially the two slides are locked together so that rotation of the tool does not occur towards the end of the stroke.

Andrew