Okay, so Thank you all for replying to me, Now I need to decide what to do with this amazing discovery (LoL)
Do you guys think it has any value like a million dollars ? anyone interested in making an offer on it to buy? is it something I donate to the Industry museum here in waltham ?
What are your thoughts
thanks in advance
Jim
Fair query. Trying to be "objective" on that.
Disclosure first, then. I have a slotter. K&T head re-purposed to a US /Burke "Quartet" combo mill. Also a shaper. 12" Sheldon.
THIS head has as principle value the ability to do the hard thing for a mill. Cut INTERNAL keyways or splines. Not the only thing a slotter can do, but the hardest to do with the mill itself. One needs a planer, shaper, or slotter to do those with relative ease.
Clearly, the slotting head as an attachment takes up only a tiny fraction of the space, and NO extra power wiring, vs a planer or shaper.
Those are the "positive strokes", pun intended.
To the negatives, then:
The very need for internal keyways or splines at all is uncommon for most of us.
Those rare needs can be, and have been, served by cutting "stroke shaper" style by HAND operation of a lathe carriage, a milling machine table, or even an arbour press, or powered OFF drillpress quill. Not fun, but if needed but once in ten or fifteen years? Why tool for it. EDM contract shops exist. So, too waterjet. And, of course, bespoke gear and spline houses.
Even so, if I had acquired the Quartet AND its K&T slotter FIRST? I'd have no need of my shaper. Power I have aplenty. Floor space, not so much.
For someone with a Nichols - or any other small mill as this head could be adapted to - much the same applies.
Even if seldom used, it can obviate the need for a larger and bulkier machine tool, such as a shaper.
This presumes, of course, that the mill also covers the REST of what a shaper would be asked to do.
Where does that leave me with regard to cash-money?
Head is worth about a hundred buck gamble as a "potential" add-on to make my Burke #4 more valuable when I sell it.
Even so, "too many unfinished projects already", so I would be happier if it went to a Nichols owner instead - price irrelevent to ME - and had a far greater chance of actually being used.
If a museum-wanderer is to look at a self-fornicating device? Singer ... finished their mass-produced sewing machines to some of the highest standards the world had seen. Then. Or since. This head, even with a wash, brush-up, and repaint, would look like plumbing valve scrap next to any one of those.
5 1/2 CW