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Moving Out - rigging the last two machines

motion guru

Diamond
Joined
Dec 8, 2003
Location
Yacolt, WA
Our planer mill is headed to our new facility this afternoon. Farwest Machinery Moving has been safe, quick and efficient. Our Haas VF3 will go next.
0718191140_HDR.jpg

We moved the lathes and knee mills and Tree 425 CNC ourselves along with a lot of machinery that we are in the midst of building for customers.

Next week we start taking down the mezzanine and then the crane, columns and runway beams. The crane will be transplanted to the new facility and we have a couple of folks interested in our columns / runway beams.

Here is where everything is being piled at present . . .

0630191231.jpg
 
You couldn't move the vf3 yourself? Just curious... I see the beast you are moving in the photo, understand that, but a vf3 isn't all that big (but I am making alot of assumptions about your other machinery)....
 
You couldn't move the vf3 yourself? Just curious... I see the beast you are moving in the photo, understand that, but a vf3 isn't all that big (but I am making alot of assumptions about your other machinery)....
If it fit on the trailer with the planer I'd let them jack with it.

Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk
 
You couldn't move the vf3 yourself? Just curious... I see the beast you are moving in the photo, understand that, but a vf3 isn't all that big (but I am making alot of assumptions about your other machinery)....

Our largest forklift can only lift 10k . . . our understanding is that the Haas tips the scales at 13k.
 
You are a long drive from Detroit.
Bob

True, but after you get past the east half of North Dakota the drive gets a lot prettier.

Motion, Congratulations on moving into the new building. It requires a lot of faith in your company's ability and the economy as a whole to commit to payments of that scale.
 
Hey I live in the eastern half of North Dakota! You have apparently never traveled thorough the Sheyenne River Valley. Closest thing to New England in the Western half of the United States!

Dale Nelson
 
Did/do you own the prior building? (So you would now either sell or lease it out?) Would sure seem your new design is intended to allow everything to be in one straightforward location...
 
We owned the building from 2002 to 2018 when we sold it to finance the new building. We moved in with about 10 employees and at the time did no machining or fabrication. I thought we would never outgrow that building.

This week we bought a Butler 5 x 5 x 20 planer mill and I am already wondering if we should have built a little larger.
 
I started in 1996 in a garage after a few years designing tunneling equipment right out of college (TBM’s for the English Channel, Bozberg Transportation Tunnel, Svartisen Hydro, etc.) then designing motion control and high power coordinated drive systems and dynes for a variety of applications in steel, forest products, and paper industries. The travel with these two jobs was hard on a young family so I quit and went out on my own. I sold my house in Seattle and moved to Yacolt Washington to live with in-laws until I could see if the entrepreneur thing would pan out.

The first “on my own” project was design / build / program motion controls and servo drives for heat sealing Mylar lids on Pringle cans at 400 cans / minute. Then I helped figure out how to change the way frozen juice containers were sealed by coming up with a retrofit kit for can machines that replaced the white plastic strip on these cans with a strip with a hole in the end to make it easier to grab. Both projects for Sonoco Products Company in Hartsville South Carolina.

Then I was fortunate to be asked to help improve a few manufacturing processes in completely different industries (paper converting and glass container production) and I got too busy to be a one person company so I began hiring people. We are at 60 employees now designing specialty machines for Georgia-Pacific, Ardagh Group, Boeing, ICS Blount, Northrop Grumman, and a host of other companies. We have worked with a number of folks on the PM on everything from the LIGO project to a Marimba resonator press. My hope is that this new facility will let us grow unencumbered for a couple more decades when I can retire and let someone else run the company.
 
We owned the building from 2002 to 2018 when we sold it to finance the new building. We moved in with about 10 employees and at the time did no machining or fabrication. I thought we would never outgrow that building.

This week we bought a Butler 5 x 5 x 20 planer mill and I am already wondering if we should have built a little larger.

I'd like to see photos of the " Butler ".

An old friend of mine was chief salesman for " Futurmill " in the UK back in the early 1960's. One day he called in at " Butler's " in Halifax to discuss fitting the "Futurmill " milling heads onto " Butler " planers with their design team.

When George Butler heard about it he ordered the company commissionaire escort my pal off the site saying " Put those ugly milling heads on my beautiful planers, never ! "

About 5 years later when the orders for planing machines had more or less dried up he was back phoning my pal and begging him to come in and discuss a deal regarding the milling heads.

It was only when they got a deal with " MECOF " to build what became the " Elgamill " that they stayed in business.

Their planers were really nice machines but I've only seen a couple of the " Butler/Futurmill " Plano-Mills.

If you need more headroom you can always dig a pit in the new shop.

Regards Tyrone.
 
We owned the building from 2002 to 2018 when we sold it to finance the new building. We moved in with about 10 employees and at the time did no machining or fabrication. I thought we would never outgrow that building.

This week we bought a Butler 5 x 5 x 20 planer mill and I am already wondering if we should have built a little larger.

Sorry, Internet playing up. Repeat post.

Regards Tyrone.
 
Congratulations! Looks like a really nice new facility you're moving into.

Totally off topic. In the first picture what are those things on the blue machine to the right that look like huge saw blades? I may be seeing them wrong but from here they look to have teeth similar to big saw blades.

Brent
 
Congratulations! Looks like a really nice new facility you're moving into.

Totally off topic. In the first picture what are those things on the blue machine to the right that look like huge saw blades? I may be seeing them wrong but from here they look to have teeth similar to big saw blades.

Brent

Those are fixtures for a surface grinder that we rebuilt. That was the single most finicky project we ever undertook. Final results were +/- 0.0003 inches batch to batch and in batch with a Cp of 0.7

https://www.practicalmachinist.com/...ocess-grinding-measurement-marpossinstall.jpg
 








 
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