Imagine a time when we were thrilled with a 1 hour 20 minute cycle time on production machining a shoe box size casting!
But they are tits for onesy-twosies. If it will fit on the table, you can get to it. Hang the bar out 24" (I only had a little one), bottom of a hole you couldn't even see, 5" cutter, no chatter. Hold size ? all day long. Jig boring, all day long. Did I mention acc-u-rate ? And the table is totally supported no matter where you put the part, the accuracy is *throughout* the envelope, not just in the middle of a sweet spot, Even the damn accessories are enjoyable to use.
And running them, every control falls into your hand. Don't even have to think, just put your hand up and oh yeah, there's the feed lever, under my thumb. Rapid retract for measuring, hit the button, part backs out, measure, hit the button, comes back within tenth. Power drawbar. Power everything. Speeds and feeds up the wazoo.
For job-shop work, the damn things are just a joy. For production, compared to doing things with readouts, also a joy. You can set them up to auto-locate (sort of - they have highly accurate bars that go into v-grooves, like some other jig bores. You just hit the button, the machine rapid advances to the bar's location, backs up, re-advances slowly, unclamps the drive to eliminate pressure on the measuring device, clamps the table. Automatically. Built-in indicators to show you where it is. All it doesn't do is give you a little jolt in the ass to tell you it's ready.
If you like machining, you owe it to yourself to drive a Devlieg some day. If I were starting a job shop again, this would be one of the first machines I would look for. They make turret mills look like toys.
And they didn't go broke "because they couldn't compete" or anything. Third generation owner sold it off so he could sleaze around in the Bahamas boinking bimbos and packing his nose. New owners just wanted to strip the assets. Three weeks after the sale he had a heart attack and croaked. God makes funny jokes sometimes
btw, if you are talking about the 3B photo, that's not a shoebox-sized casting. 3B has maybe 48" of travel in X ? The 2B has 36 so I'm guessing a little here ... but that part is not as small as you think.
thanks for the photos, tonylathes. Devliegs are just a machine you don't get over ... (I do NOT want to hear from you Dixi guys ! Stow it !
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