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What jobs have you done with your shaper?

I have owned two 7" shapers. On both of them, the only work I did was to find new buyers.

I did see one work once, in 1959 at the University of Michigan. An elderly welding professor showed us how to make flat welded joint tensile test coupons using the shaper to make the precise width necked-down portion. I think we pulled them to see the relative strength of different types of weld. The shaper was right there in the welding lab and only used for that one job. We would have had to go down a few floors to get to where the milling machines were, in a huge machine shop. After the first thirty seconds, the shaper was like watching paint dry. The welding was a lot more fun.

Larry
 
Keyways and squaring blocks of steel.
I haven't really had one large enough in running shape til last year, and since, haven't had the time to use it much. For many years all I had was an A**** but it cut several keyways and did some other jobs
 
Yeah, had one of those 7 inch shapers too. Seemed like a good idea at time. Traded it for an anvil and some tongs. I'm sure the other guy got the better deal money wise, but the anvil is a useful metalworking tool.
 
Making little out of big in the 36" Ohio
 

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Making split bushing halves out of heavy wall tube in the 12" Pratt & Whitney vertical
 

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Mostly internal geometries cut. It's either that or buy an expensive broach. I also use a die filing machine for similar internal work on occasion.

One job was a solid block of 304 about 6 X 6 X 2 that needed a rectangular hole through it as a cheese wire loom. I drilled adjacent holes inside the scribed line and broke through those with a special hand made chisel, then cut the internal rectangle with my shaper. I think it was an Ammco 7".
For gun making a shaper is very valuable, for cutting internal features again. It's possible to go one's whole life without using a shaper, and never appreciate them like we who have needed to use them.
 
Compound gear out of nylon for a functional prototype. Production design is injection molded. I used the shaper with a form tool to cut the smaller set of teeth.
 
I used a 24" Cincinnati quite a bit to machine flame-cut chunks of plate steel that were destined to become a large weldment. Machining off the torch scale with the shaper was a lot cheaper than burning through milling cutters doing the job, and not all that much slower.

Andy
 
Made a set of aluminum jaw caps for a vise with bad ones this weekend. Cheated and touched them up with the mill at the end- Shaper vise was too heavy to pull to get the vise on the table...

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Compound gear out of nylon for a functional prototype. Production design is injection molded. I used the shaper with a form tool to cut the smaller set of teeth.

Nylon on a shaper is fun:) even on my little 8'' Boxford http://www.lathes.co.uk/boxfordshaper/ 3/4'' deep & 0.010 per stroke feed soon had the blocks down to size. The mill was already set on another job, ........I tried a higher feed rate but it was chipping out at the end of the cut :(

FWIW Like other posters mine mainly get's used for internal profiling work with sharp corners, ..but I have one customer who makes fancy doo dad electrical control gear (god knows what it's for) with small - say 6 x 4 black Acetal (Delrin) switch panels that he insists on a linear tool finish.

He reckons circular marks from a mill ruin the appearance ...funny part is the finish he wants is like a ''shiny roughing cut'' so the first time round I ran a couple of samples for him and had to bite my tongue while he raved about the roughest one! so I said something like, ''MMM? ..yeah? that finish did a bit of getting'' and he was thanking me for my efforts! .................and quite happily pays plenty $$ :D
 
My little 12"Butler fairly earns it corn,machines sg iron cross heads to take the ci slippers,facing gunmetal shell halves for sweating together and other like stuff. It's quick too,and the cuttings go into the tray in front of the vice ,and not all over the machine.
 
I couldn't even begin to list all of the things I've done on my shaper.

Unlike milling cutters - and my primary mill is a horizontal - shaper cutters are dirt cheap and easy to sharpen. So it, rather than the mill, is often the machine I turn to for roughing parts out. Put a piece of rusty steel plate in it, set it for a fine feed, and come back later. I may finish many of those parts on the surface grinder, but the shaper gets them to size quickly and cheaply. I have hundreds of pounds of old steel snowplow edge, with rust and scale that will quickly dull milling cutters, that have become jigs and fixtures, tee nuts and clamps, and parts of all sorts.

Next are the the jobs that could be done on the mill but would require special cutters. Things such as cutting dovetails into large (1-1/4 or 1-1/2" square) toolholders that allow them to be mounted directly on a quick change toolpost. Cutting tee slots. Much more.

And then there are those rare jobs that simply cannot be done on the mill, such as cutting internal keyways and splines, cutting square holes in sockets, etc.

One of the early jobs I did on the shaper was to make a replacement buckle for a garrison belt from naval bronze plate. Cut the shallow curves on the front and back by following scribed lines by eye - hand feeding/retracting the depth while the machine was power feeding. Then the cutouts were milled. Made a few more since, and my younger son and nephew have each made them for their wives.
 
Putting oil gallery in reverse plate and the shop built tool that did it in the 12" Vertical P&W shaper
 

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I run a 36" Cincinnati every once in a while just to cycle the oil through the machine. It's usually on a job I could easily do in a milling machine. Just something about setting it up and doing something else while it runs...
 








 
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