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One attempt at "straight'nin' the curves"
I insert drill 304 stainless on a lathe without high pressure coolant. Really pushing things and a hiccup in coolant sometimes melts the ends of the tool. Sometimes fixable with some time on the grinder if the insert pockets aren't trashed.

On yours I think you are going to have to run the spindle in reverse to rewind it.
 
Got Davenport's?

Well, my chum sure does.
Here's some pics inside his shop, with several carcasses setting outside for scrap.

He mostly rebuilds and sells Davenport Attachments, but will buy and sell and even rebuild machines at times.

This is what 61 small multi-spindles look like w/o stock reels...
Some with Noise Tamer enclosures, most w/o


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Think Snow Eh!
Ox
 

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Key point to ask something I've long wondered...

How is a davenport different from say an acme-gridly (sp?) and how different from them is something like an Index? I think understand CNC lathes, and even cnc swiss, but the various multi-spindles are still mysterious to me.
(A pointer to an article would be a fine answer.)
 
I am looking for something from post WWII myself, but I have a reproduction of Automatic Screw Machines by Douglas T. Hamilton and Franklin D. Jones, 1916, The Industrial Press. Subtitle is A Treatise on the Construction, Design, and Operation of Automatic Screw Machines and Their Tool Equipment.
Chapter 3 is about multi-spindle automatics, and it features Acme 4-spindle, Davenport 5-spindle, Hayden 5-spindle, Gridley 4-spindle and New Britain 6-spindle machines.
The reproduction is by Kessinger Publishing from a copy in the University of California library system. Photo reproduction, no OCR. It's pretty legible, but a few of the machine photographs are so dark they are hard to make out. I suspect those photos in the original were marginal.
 
OK, as per the pics, I simply stood in/on the first machines door tracking and held the camera high.
I don't have any drones.


The Davenport is a marvel of engineering. Mostly unchanged from over 100 years ago.
It is a 5 spindle machine that is designed to have 9/16" capacity, but many sell spindles that will go up to 7/8" capacity, but for the most part, you would only run that big if you were running brass or alum, or dooing very little work to steel maybe. These are a very lightweight machine, which is why they are so fast. They have a chip to chip time of .4 seconds. There are actually jobs out there running @ 3600/hour. I remember my chum fighting to get one running at that speed to run pistons for Nike Pumps back in the day.

There are oodles of attachments that are designed to be bolted onto these things. Pick-off is almost a standard feature on these, and spindle stopping is pretty common. So they have straddle mills, cross drills, and other such attachments that are designed for these. Actually, the cross drill units that I have seen for these are actually DOUBLE cross drills, and there can be a tool coming from each side, but on a common slide. So, whether you actually drill through from one side, and run a deburr tool on the other side, or maybe you drill through to C/L from each side....

Live slotting is a common feature as well, where there is a slitting saw that comes in from the end, in synch with the bar, and will put a straight screwdriver slot in the end of your part.

One of today's leading "on machine" thread rolling units would be CJ Winter, which is a pneumatic version of what a Davenport does via cams.

My chum here was the bleeder screw king back in the late 80's and all through the 90's. I used to make "knock-outs" for him at least weekly back then as they would get trashed in a train wreck. But now is a rebuilder and dealer of mostly attachments, but as you can see here, he has full machines and parts machines as well.

Most of these attachments can be built or bought for the likes of Acme's, Index's, Wickman's, and such, but AFAIK, many of those were copied from what the Davenport engineers came up with 100 years ago.

The Davenport lends it'self to small and intricate parts, but it is not a workhorse. A bare bones machine will be around 4000# or so. Where as a bare bones 9/16" or 1" Acme or about any other common multi-spindle will be twice that, and take 2 or even 3 times as long to make a small part.


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Think Snow Eh!
Ox
 
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Think Snow Eh!
Ox
 
OK, so, I got in a pair of clean, used, one owner Hardinge swiss lathes last year....
OK, well ... they're used at least ....

And these came in with Iemca 12' feeders.
I'm an LNS guy, and don't know my way around these items, although when I talked with Iemca reps when we first got them in - they seem very willing to help in any way, and I was given a bit of pointer to git started. So far these guys seem top notch!

But we have been very busy the last 2 years, and even tho it would help out if I had access to these machines, I just haven't had the time or ambition to devote to gitt'n'm goin' yet. And every time I would dink with them, I just didn't seem to find myself getting anywhere....

So I read some of the starter pages of the manual, and I just don't seem to be gitt'n any traction. The display comes up fine, but I really don't git anything else yet... It seems like I should be able to figger out how to git it to doo sumpthing in MANUAL mode eh? But I'm just coming up with snake eyes...

And then a day'r two ago I decided that I could spend a cpl hours on that... and I played around with it...
And as I am rummaging around in the electrical cabinet on the feeder, I found some special oil of sorts, and something else (don't recall) and then this ... big chunk of electrical component. At least the size of a typical I/O unit, but much heavier.

I looked around the cabinet to find one like it as I'm ass_u_ming that this is a bad unit, and that there should be a good one in place - somewhere... But I'm just not finding it....

So then I decide that I need to start looking for a place to put this one!
And I found it!

This thing came undone, slid 6" back on it's tracking, and fell out and onto the floor. I would have thought that the door would have kept it on track, but I guess there's enough room in there...

So I powered the machine down and installed the .... component, and repowered, and NOW I have some manual control of things! I'm expecting that I will get this figgered out sooner than later now with this threshold being crossed!


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Think Snow Eh!
Ox
 

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It's looks important (somewhat, mildly).....Hey, it's green....:D

Hardinge Swiss.....roll their own or just re-badge ?
 
Harcrete base for starters.
Not sure that's a major selling point really, but it is different.

They have a good reputation for taking high thrust loads.
So they are known to be good for rotary broaching.

Not figgered out yet how to git to the collet to change it.
My old Tornos is easy, and maybe this one is as well, but it's not obvious to see so far. :o
I even asked my Hardinge tech who was here a few weeks ago.
I said:

"Hey, while you're here, you wunna show me how to git to the collet on these other machines?"
(He was here working on Siemens controls - plural)

Eventually he defaulted to "I wrench on them, not run'm. Check the Opp manual." :D

LOL!

I'm sure that I will figger that part out, just gotta git the barfeeder under control first.
But should make headway on that now.


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Think Snow Eh!
Ox
 
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Newsed Iron Day!


OK, so I have been fussin' about Siemens 810 controls for some time now. I have 3 of them, and 2 were down, so I had my Hardinge guy come out and hep me out here...

One machine that we were running started throwing battery alarms, and so I ordered up a few new batts, and waited until it was a good time, and I swapped out the batts, but since you can't swap these "hot", you are relying on 20 yr old capacitors to hold it up for a short time. It didn't work out for us... And there was no Archive file on board either, so ....

So ... we moved the job over to a sister mill that was open, only to find that it's brains were scrambled!

So, with some hep, we got one mill up, and the other'n, we're not sure if there is hard part failure somewhere or what.

There are actually 2 versions of the Siemens 810D. One is the PC50 which has a hard drive. The other is the PC20 that ... doesn't. I'm not sure exactly how it works, but there is a slot for a memory card, but no-one's home there either.... This machine without the hard drive is the one that is in question....

Then a cpl weeks ago I posted a machine that was available on ebay for someone. Seemed like a better investment than what he wanted to doo. (to me) A few days go by and I'm asking myself, "Self, maybe it would be a good idea for y'all to fetch that mill yourself?" And so that's what I did.

It arrived this morning. It is essentially the same basic machine as the one with the bad control, but it does NOT have a geared head, nor an A axis, but it DOES have a chip conveyor and twin carousel changers. But most importantly, it has a FANUC control on it!

So now I need to fetch an amp and a motor for the A axis, and then, hopefully I can move the geared head over to this machine as well. That's the reasoning here anyhow...

Machine weighs 11,000#. Picked it off the truck with my 8 on the heavy side, and our 5 helping out a bit on the other side, and drove the truck out from under it. Once I was on the ground I was able to scootch the 8 up tight, and I am actually able to handle it with one truck now. (with extra ballast)

Machine appears to be pretty nice. Electrical cabinet looks brand new inside.

The old machine will just turn into a cannibal for the other machines then.


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Think Snow Eh!
Ox
 

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