Giant DeVlieg available?

Just in case anybody could possibly be interested, a super big devlieg might be available. There is only (according to the seller) eight of these ever made, a #6 (K or H) devlieg. It stands 18-19 feet tall and weighs 75,000 lbs. It went awhile back at an auction and a mix up in lot numbers caused a man to get it that thought he was bidding on another machine. He paid the auctioneer before he realized the mix up. The guy who bought it for $25,000 said it was going to cost $50,000 to move it. I have a machinery mover friend that drove to see if he could do better on the moving costs, but he said it was over his qualifications what would be involved. The machine had to be moved in separate pieces. The last I heard the machine is in either Flint MI or Detroit MI. I asked a friend that was at the auction to take a picture of it for me, that is how the buyer somehow contacted me about buying it where it was for his price of $25,000. I am fascinated by these big machines but don't have a building or work for one. I don't know the current status of the machine, but I have contact info on the buyer. I might be wrong on the specs on the devlieg but it is a #6 and at least 144" of 'x' travel. If someone finds the specs on a #6 please post them.

Last I heard the machine was being set up at a plant in Warren, Mi.
The machine model # 65RK-144.
The machine was purchased by Boeing and used as an inspection machine. Never cut a chip while owned by Boeing.
Monster machine!

Bob

btoms said:

The machine model # 65RK-144.

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I think that would be a 6" spindle on a 5" table with 12' of horizontal travel. Pretty big machine.

The machine is not at all your traditional DeVlieg.
Hardened and ground ways. 96" vertical.
Table will travel in & out, bar travel in & out, column travel in & out.
I'm not sure there was any hand scraped surfaces on the machine. Maybe the table top was hand scraped.
Thought I had pictures, but can't find them.

Bob

There are a couple of youtube videos. 7 built. No table in and out, W is on the column. Y is scraped.

Thank you for the correction on the table in & out. I saw the machine at the auction. Sold for 15 or 20K.
I worked as a machine builder at DeVlieg from 1964-70. Was a great place to work. I would have retired from there but I would have been on the night shift for thirty years and my marriage wouldn't have survived.
When I was at DeVlieg the biggest machine they built was the 5K-144.
The most X travel they ever had was 144". Their planer mill and the rest of the building couldn't handle any thing longer.
Beds, columns, saddles, tables moved from the machining department, to the scraping department, to the build dept on railroad tracks. It was fun moving those big hunks of real expensive iron around with 30 ton cranes. Standing up or laying down a maybe 20'+/- column made for a big pucker factor.
I can still remember C.B. Devlieg perusing the building, proud of what he had wrought.

Bob

I've two. One is a 3H from '66 you might have laid a hand on.

I don't know if this was the one that just sold. Very impressive machine tool.

I love DeVliegs. I spent about 8 years doing nothing but DeVlieg work. I don't really understand where the demand for this kind of work disappeared to. Where does industry go for large precision tooling or parts these days. Here's a photo of me around 1975 working on a jet engine strut on a 5K-144 at the (since torn down) General Dynamics Convair plant.

I didn't expect so much knowledge on the #6 DeVlieg, small world. The mans name that bought it by mistake was Mike. That's all I have in my cell phone contacts; Mike-#6 Devlieg, then a number.

I bought my 4H-60 at an auction in Manton MI at a Miedema auction. I got it for $6,000 and when I went to pay my entire bill was less than $2,000. I stood quietly for a bit thinking about the situation. They made a mistake in my favor, should I go with it? I thought how bad it would look for me when they discovered the mistake, so I told the cashier there must be a mistake. She replied "there is no mistake". I asked her to break the bill down and the DeVlieg was listed at $600. With an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, after a brief time I told her it was $6,000 not $600. She called for the auctioneer and he confirmed it was $6,000. I told the woman cashier that I had to be honest, they would have caught the mistake anyways. Now here's the painful part, she said it never would have been discovered, they simply turned all the checks over to a bank who didn't know about anything except the bottom line dollar figure. They say when you do a good deed, you feel good inside, so why don't I feel that warm, fuzzy feeling?!

Were there very large CNC Devliegs with multi-pallet systems? With pictures on this thread the machine in question doesn't look all that big. I would swear it was a devlieg I looked at that was CNC with multiple 6' sized pallets and a massive column/headstock/spindle at one point in time.

gbent,
If your 3H was built in 66 chances are pretty good I did have my hands on it.
I have three DeVliegs, a 2B-36, a 4B-96, both built in 1959, and a 3K-48 built in 1970.

Bob

As nice as they are, a CNC mill will run circles around any of these manual HBM/Jig Mills.
And this is coming from someone who just spent 17 days line boring a big centrifugal compressor case with a 6" spindle floor mill.

I'd love to have a Devleig though, they are beautiful machines. Only ran a 3B for about 10min, but it was a joy.

Bourn and Koch has a few CNC Devleigs, they post pictures of them and the parts they run on their Instagram.

Garwood said:

Were there very large CNC Devliegs with multi-pallet systems? With pictures on this thread the machine in question doesn't look all that big. I would swear it was a devlieg I looked at that was CNC with multiple 6' sized pallets and a massive column/headstock/spindle at one point in time.

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Here's a photo of a 54K-72 that was retrofitted to CNC. This particular shop had several that had been retrofitted, they were being used to build helicopter gearboxes. I don't know if any DeVliegs were originally built as CNC? This one shown was a Herbert DeVlieg.

The machine, 65RK-144 is set up and running at Finkle Machine in Warren, Mi.

Marty, one half of the team that bought and installed the machine was at my plant today chasing electrical gremlins in my 3K-48. From 65RK-144 to 3K-48 that is almost as far as you can get size wise between machines. 2B-36 is smaller than the 3k-48.

Marty did say that DeVlieg did make a 168" X axis machine. Just one.

Bob