Moore is still in business and they still support some older jig borers, but cnc jig grinders are the main thing now, along with diamond turning equipment. This is a supper precision lathe that runs on air bearings for like about zilch run-out. The motion is controlled by computer and many feed back loops are used to ensure a very near perfect shape, such as a sphere or concave, convex or a-sphere. They use them to turn metals used in optical products and achieve reflective super finished surfaces using a single point diamond tool. Normally a part would be made on any-old lathe with stock left on the surface needing to be reflective and usually having less than 50 millionths run-out to another feature having some importance to optical performance. The drawings I have seen have a flag note indicating that the surfaces require diamond turning to be produced. This eliminates lapping and ensures on axis optical performance.
I was happy to find out recently that Moore will still rebuild a jig bore spindle and still has spindle tooling available for #1,#2 and #3 machines. I have a #2 manufactured in 1951 and it is a beautiful example of precision. The spindle run-out is still under 25 millionths and it is square within .00015 any place on the table. These machine were expensive but now are relatively cheep to buy and there are quite a few still around. I am using mine to place hole locations that are 0 true position at mmc, and have not had a bad hole yet. GO MOORE!!!! By the way, NIST has a few of the Moore measuring machines and they are probably still in use. So the next time you see one of these old dinosaurs at an auction bid a few bucks on it and you will be able to locate features on your tooling just like the ½ million dollar guys do.
