Advantage using this B&S Mill

Looking at HGR from time to time to see if they have something I can use. They have a B&S Horizontal mill but the spindle and drive is mounted in a dovetail ram. what is the purpose of this arrangement?
Used Machinery & Industrial Equipment | HGR Industrial Surplus

Froneck said:

Looking at HGR from time to time to see if they have something I can use. They have a B&S Horizontal mill but the spindle and drive in mounted in a dovetail ram. hat is the purpose of this arrangement?
Used Machinery & Industrial Equipment | HGR Industrial SurplusView attachment 295306

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HGR call it a 10" X 50". Not all that special, but..

I suspect the way it is built gives it a wider range of tool to work positioning where large and awkward parts have to be gotten into the work zone, then reached across to get to a feature to be milled.

Find a vintage OEM brochure, it will probably brag about that - or whatever ELSE it was as justified the design.

If I hadn't seen the name cast in the column, I'd have called it "Van Norman & Sharpe".

Paolo

Never seen a DYNAMASTER - but I think that is what it says under B&S

Listed for years '61 to '67 in serial book

Using my x-ray vision, I see its a "empty column" design

johnoder said:

Never seen a DYNAMASTER - but I think that is what it says under B&S

Listed for years '61 to '67 in serial book

Using my x-ray vision, I see its a "empty column" design

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I could look it up but.. short time in the market may have had nought to do with merit.

ISTR B&S and their Union marched out of the factory and more or less right into Hell after one of the longest-ever "detours", around that time, did they not?

Seems to me there was a particular application for this design. It does have round overarms but the support piece is missing as it often is with horizontal mills on HGR. I know production mills had movable spindles because the table had no "Y" adjustment. I've owned quite a few horizontal mills and can't think of any reason for his design.

did they not?

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Maybe so - I left RI August '63 and by then the new digs in North Kingston were well on their way - escaping finally from the century old plus filth of the sprawling Providence plant

Froneck said:

Seems to me there was a particular application for this design. It does have round overarms but the support piece is missing as it often is with horizontal mills on HGR. I know production mills had movable spindles because the table had no "Y" adjustment. I've owned quite a few horizontal mills and can't think of any reason for his design.

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Looks to have more fore/aft travel than average plus spindle carrier travel would make it more HBM-like.

I'm well out of my depth on B&S (don't shoot ), but I found this - a ''Rangemaster'' ????????????

http://vintagemachinery.org/pubs/2185/19773.pdf

and this http://vintagemachinery.org/pubs/2185/20060.pdf

johnoder said:

Maybe so - I left RI August '63 and by then the new digs in North Kingston were well on their way - escaping finally from the century old plus filth of the sprawling Providence plant

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I just now did go and look it up. About ten years later than this mill went out of the catalog in '67.

Beginning of the end was when both sides got at cross-purposes, 1977, neither ever flinched an inch in a damn-fool war to the death:

Beginning of the end of Browne and Sharpe | WJAR

Extract:
=====

Brown and Sharpe shut down its North Providence Greystone plant on Nov. 16, 1982, in the midst of a machinists' union strike that began about five years earlier.

====

The "terminal" five years were not even the whole saga. Elsewhere it has been written up as one of the longest, stupidest, and most destructive industrial actions, ever, with a seventeen year run, and a major influencer on MOST New England manufacturers folding up or moving out of the reach of inflexible "seniority or death" Unions.

Meanwhile, as with plants I have seen down-sized, then soon after shut-down, and then liquidated, not even MOVED, same reason, "hands on", (IBEW) ..the CUSTOMERS had gone elsewhere.

Of course they would!

Brown & Sharpe - Wikipedia

More to the point of machines as "new" as this one, in thread?

Wiki history sez B&S was ALREADY getting out of the general-purpose milling-machine bizness - or PLANNING and trying to do - in favour of "automatics", and from the 1950's, as much as ten years before this one appeared?

"Be that as it may.." an era had sort of been sidelined as much out of indifference as of conflict.. as B&S had moved-on. Back to their roots in metrology, mostly.

"Bean Counter grade" history here. If anyone still cares. I knew they SOLD Tesa goods. I had not been aware B&S OWNED Tesa, nor Leitz of Wetzlar, and a few other well-known-name "surprises":

History of Brown & Sharpe Manufacturing Co. – FundingUniverse

Back to the future:

This - mini-HBM'ish? - mill might have been one of the last-ever new'ish B&S designs as far as "mostly conventional" mills go?

Interesting if it gets a new home and is put back to making chips,, "right here, on PM".

I can understand using a Horizontal Mill as a mini HBM. However I had quite a few K&T mills and also seen B&S mills at HGR with rear controls. For those that are not sure what rear controls are, they are a means of operating the mill on the spindle side of the table. My K&T's had dials in thousandths to move the table UP/Down and In/Out (Y), engage the feed for both. The X axis was available on the end of the table with a means to engage the feed. Another handle was for rapid that would engage rapid travel to any axis the feed was engaged. I have seen this also on B&S mills, both were on the LH side.
I would think that if this mill was intended to be used as a mini HMB when needed the rear controls would be provided.

Froneck said:

I would think that if this mill was intended to be used as a mini HMB when needed the rear controls would be provided.

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You would be disappointed.

It is a rule of nature that even the best of machine tool builders are never allowed to be QUITE one-hundred percent right!

Not until humans get sorted FIRST, anyway!

Used Brown & Sharpe Brown & Sharpe 506-20-4 Universal Mill | HGR Industrial...

Here’s one at HGR still with the head. I like the little crane that swings the head from the side to the front. Cool mill wish I had space for something like that, the manual makes cutting dovetails and t slots a breeze!

Advantage using this B&S Mill

That HGR mill is pretty sharp! I’m coming around to the Van Norman duplex clone theory.

I think the Dynamaster was a later designed mill. I had one that had auto cycle and didn't like it. It had a series of switches on the X axis that would use Hydraulic power for feed. I seen other versions that used mechanical levers to operate the feed. Interesting feature that I don't know why it was designed that way but the spindle housing protruded out not flush with the vertical ways like the older versions.