Shaper madness

[Philip RoweParticipant @philiprowe13116]

Slightly O/T but can anyone tell me what is the difference between a shaper and a planer, is it just size? I have seen photos of huge machines planing con rods in the old GWR works in Swindon probably 20 feet long and I've often wondered what the difference is.

I have used shaping machines as part of my apprenticeship back in the early sixties and found them very useful for rapid removal of material but then along came the reasonably priced vertical drill/mills for amateur use and I have found them to be more versatile in the home workshop.

Phil

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

A shaper moves the tool backwards and forwards on the end of a cantileverd arm, a planer moves the job backwards and forwards with the tool fixed to moveable carriage sliding on an adjustable goalpost arrangement. More rigid than a shaper, but a lot more expensive and probably took up more room. Some planers had more than one toolpost and so could do 2 cuts at once. Same arrangement but with a rotating tool (imagine a vertical milling head bolted to the sliding carriage) was known as a plano-miller. Some of the big ones were very big indeed

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

I used my Adept No. 2 in anger at last to cut a dovetail in aluminium alloy. Took a lot of fettling to get the tool shape right, but once I did it made a very smooth surface and took surprisingly little effort.

Neil

[RobboParticipant @robbo]

ndiy

machining any flat, straight surfaces at any angle. can produce dovetails, v-blocks etc.

Leaves a wonderful finish on cast iron, with no cutter marks and it laughs at the "hard skin" that blunts milling cutters.

Cutting keyways is a minor part of its use.

Uses tooling similar to lathe tools which can be ground at home to any shape – no need to buy expensive milling cutters

Edited for spelling!

Edited By Robbo on 19/12/2016 21:18:23

[richardandtracyParticipant @richardandtracy]

Vee blocks are easily done with the shaper. I have yet to use it for dovetails.

Got to make a gib strip soon, and the bevelled edges are easy too.

Regards

Richard

[Rik ShawParticipant @rikshaw]

I once had to cut the dovetails along the length of a finish machined block of CI. The solid block (from memory was approx. 4 foot long by 18 inches square) and when finished became part of a thread rolling machine. I did the job on a planer with the clapper box canted over and a long pointy tool sticking a long way out of the clapper box so it would get right inside the dovetails.

Scrapping a job like this at such a late stage would have been unforgivable and I remember feeling quite windy doing it.

I don’t remember the length of the planer table but it was around 12 metres – not large compared to some I have seen. Occasionally the table would miss its stop and hit the brick wall three foot from the end of the machine with a huge BOOM which made the entire hangar rattle – just like a bomb going of. Oh what fun we had back then.

Rik

[Mike PooleParticipant @mikepoole82104]

The toolroom I worked in (as a sparky) had an old Stirk Planer, a very solid machine, the swarf was to be avoided red hot and about an inch wide you couldn't bend it when it cooled. They used it mostly to make steel bolsters for press tools and produced the deadly swarf the cast iron of the dies was much more friendly though. The control panel was a work of art, the door was cast iron with glass windows and the backplane was slate with all the contactors built from separate parts. The table was driven by a Ward Leonard variable speed drive and the field control was a brass handwheel on the panel door which engaged with a wiper to select the resistance required.

Mike

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