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K&T Autometric B horizontal boring mill

Milacron

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Dec 15, 2000
Location
SC, USA
Any of you self respecting heavy iron men seen one of these anywhere, ever ??

autometric1.jpg
 
Our local college has one in their machine shop.
Ran it once or twice about 20 years ago as part of a shop course. They have never used it much that I know of except to drill holes in their sine bar projects. It would have been in it's time a pretty nice machine for the sort of work shown on the brochure. Still would be for one off jobs for that matter. I'll try to get by and get some pictures this week.
 
Thanks William. How do I get on their "surplus" list in case it ever is up for "disposal" ?
 
Utah Machine has had one for sale for at least 10 years. It's still for sale. Last time I talked to him about it, he's still firm at $7500.00. He's probably spent that much on it now, listing it in the Surplus record, plus where ever else he advertises for the last ten years.

I was going to buy one from a shop near Pittsburg three or four years ago. He may still have it. He was asking $4500.00 for it, mainly cuz he just installed a three axis DRO on it. At some point in our negotiations, he decided to just keep it.

The Autometric company used to make these machines in Bizerkley, California. The machines they made morphed into the Autometric after Kearney and Trecker bought either the company, or the machine in the forties or maybe late thirties.. Charles Devlieg was involved in the design of the Autometric, when he worked for K&T. Obviously he realized the potential, because shortly he was making his famous Devlieg Jigmils. The original Autometric company made this machine in three different styles, one of which became the Model B. K&T did a nice job with the machine. I ended up getting a Model C Autometric, which is a Vertical Jig Boring Machine. It shares many of the same parts as the Model B. But alas it's NOT the same machine with the built in rotary table. As far as a jig bore, the Autometric C is not as user friendly as a Moore. I don't like the toolholder which is common with the model B. The gearbox is a BIt-h to change speeds. For a roughly 7000 pound machine, it's capacities are too small.

JimK has an Autometric if I remember right. I haven't seen him posting lately.
 
Damn Brian.... where do you come up with all this history!

Have seen a bunch of these machines around Berkeley, mostly at places that catered to the Rad-Lab. Never knew they were a local product.

Cyclotronguy
 
I remember reading something a couple of years back, that Devlieg actually worked on the Autometric, but checking some history today, he had already left K&T by the time they were involved with the Autometric. I'll have to dig up where I read about his relationship with this machine. I have some original Autometric literature, when they made the machine in Berkeley. These are events from the thirties, and early forties. I'd love to know what the deal was between Autometric and K&T.

Machine tool company history, is really interesting. Some people watch sports, I'd rather be reading about some of these incredible companies and men, that really made America great.
 
I'm surprised that Moore didn't get to this.
I give tons of credit to the hard working guys at KT.

I will own one of these some day.
 
We had one-the non-K&T, made in Berkeley version. Seems there was another thread here on PM about them some time ago. The one in the brochure above has a much heavier column and spindle carrier that the one we had, so K&T probably did some redesign on them at some point. I sold ours to a bicycle manufacturer in Colorado thru ebay a long time ago. Ours was 40 taper. AFAIK, they had provision for an outboard support somewhat like an HBM.
Height wise, ours was much shorter- the top of the column came chest high, where as the one in the picture is over the guys head.
 
The easiest way to get tooling is to buy cat40 stuff and take off the flange on a lathe. I have a few more to make and I will anneal them first this time.
 
Here is a K&T NSC 40. This one is an adapter to a Morse No.3. Also pictured is a Morse No.3 to Jacobs 3.

cb1
 

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Here is another K&T 40 with a 14N chuck. Just picked this up from a fellow PMer.

Thanks,

cb1
 

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Any of you self respecting heavy iron men seen one of these anywhere, ever ??

Yes Milacron, had a chance to buy one in the mid 80's. These little boring mills are perhaps the best designed machine tools that I have ever seen.
 








 
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