What's new
What's new

Antique NC and CNC....will anyone be interested in the future ?

Milacron

Administrator
Staff member
Joined
Dec 15, 2000
Location
SC, USA
It occurs to me on occassion that there will probably come a point within a few years when there is not one single example of the first NC and CNC machine tools left on the planet.

And there were some fascinating machines (to me anyway) produced at the dawn of that era..Moog Hydrapoints, machines with hydraulic servos, wierd NC controls...even Hughes Aircraft made one for Burgmaster, the infamous "Bandit" control by Allen Bradley, Slo Syn X/Y tables and stepper motors...and on and on..

Will anyone besides me care when they are all scrapped ?

moog1.jpg


The most ubiqutious of the Moog models, circa 1969. Pneumatic logic control with hydraulic actuator drive.
 
To an extent, the same thing happened in the railroad/railfan preservation area. The railfans were so busy trying to save representatives of the last of the steam era that some early diesel types were totally lost and others nearly so. This is especially the case for manufacturers who did not long remain in the field. Plenty of the later GM F-units still exist, but maybe only one of the Alco PAs -- which some claim is the most beautiful of the diesels. Now, more effort is being put into saving diesels...maybe because all the steamers are accounted for one way or another. Charles
 
Human nature I suppose - makers and end users are always in a great hurry to forget yesterday's technology. Simple - it did its thing and is no longer profitable. As the "hi-tech" age rushes in on us, all of this is compressed. There is more of a frenzy to be done with that crap we had to use yesterday afternoon. The result is the intellectual property surrounding these industrial artifacts is hurriedly trashed and the physical remains, now in possession of any odd retrofit hopeful, are more or less of an inigma. Not understood, and not likely to be so. The old car hobbiests used to talk about "orphan" cars. We are building a large supply of orphaned technology. Very few are interested in it.

John
 
i'm thinkin a model 83-1000 would look sweet in the corner next to your fastner collection....
one barrior to these becoming collectables might be how few people will be able to make them work.
it will be considerably trickier than rubbin' the rust off an old L&S.
 
I owned an 83-100 back about 1986, as they were plentiful and about the only used NC under 5,000 lbs one could find cheap back then. Never actually used it for anything...just played with it and traded it to an aqaintence for something and he used it for making parts for a few years. Lost touch with this guy since.

I needed something to do contouring, so used a Tru Trace instead. Eventually "traded up" to a 1978 OKK NC mill with a turret head kinda like a Burgmaster.

Just last year was at an auction where there were two Lagun mills with Bandit controls that were *pristine*...absolutely like new...*very* unusual for that sort of thing....shouldda bought one of those for "the collection that is to come, that no one but me will come see"

 
I'd love to have an old NC machine, but trying to find all the stuff to go with would be harder than the machine. Anyway they don't have flatbelts!! Don't know where it'd put one either!!

Ben...who is running out of tarps!!
 
I guess the problem lies in how the machines are built. An old manual machine tool can be restored, or just made useable, because they have hand controls. The NC stuff in many cases does not have manual controls and is not easily retro'd to make it useable. The NC controls are obsolete, so if they have any use, it is to upgrade them to CNC. In many cases that is not practical.

Hopefully some museums will save some of the early machines, but unless the issue is raised, I doubt they will even think about it. Perhaps there simply is no "glamour" about these pioneer machine tools to make them worth saving.
 
Don,
I think I heard that Mr Moog, of synthesizer fame, died earlier this year. I somehow got the idea he was the same guy who did the NC controllers - is this correct, or am I confused?

Would be good to know a bit more about this era, I am sure it's importance will be recognised one day.

I wish I had kept the Motorola "Lug-about" I used to take on-site back in late 1980's-1990. A shoulder strap-hung monster the size of a car battery - would be cool to use it today.
 
Peter, I always assumed there was no connection between the synthesizer Moog and the NC Moog. Perhaps there is a Moog 'family tree' online somewhere


I still have my Motorola 10 pound, lead/acid battery, 3 watt cell phone. How much is shipping to NZ ? :D
 
Don, the biggest problem with old NC is something you have often mentioned, the fact that the older controls go bad more regularly than new ones.....

Everything has a lifetime, and the lifetime is used up on older electronics. They are hitting the up-slope of the traditional "bathtub" curve of failures vs time.

Some of it is purely solder joint failures, but some may be internal metallization migration failures, etc, etc. The latter are unfixable.

So..... the parts fail. Now, you can MAKE a new handwheel, lever, gear, spindle, etc just like the old one.... But I defy you to "make" a new IC or even a new small-signal transistor like the old one.

The transistor can probably still be replaced with an equivalent, although not identical part. But with the IC you are essentially screwed.

Elsewhere I saw where a guy had a control with a couple of old Harris HC2500 servo ICs on it. I had the data and answered his question, but......

As long as they work, fine. if one goes bad, there aren't any more, it will have to be replaced with a different setup, and no longer will be "original" as per a museum item, etc.

Sort of like a nice old early 1900's Hardinge/Cataract with a shiny new aluminum and plastic square-section handwheel on it.......
 
I believe that some examples of NC machinery should be preserved. There are some outstanding and very interesting machines that have gone away to who-knows-where.

The Milwaukee Turn 12 machining center was a lathe and mill all in one unit. The machine had a work piece changer and a changer for it's live spindle. The spindle was locked for turning.

The work holding head staock could spin like a lathe or feed slowly as the machine's fourth controlled axis.

The control would contour on at least three axes.

Sindstrand's Omnimill was parbably the most famous and popular really hi tech NC machine. It had an XY table with a rotary axis and a milling head that would go from horizontal to vertical by NC control. The machine could drill at any angle by a combination of feeds.

The tool changer was off board the machine. Each tool holder had a keyed code that was individually read by the changer. The machine saught the tool not the tool's position in the changer.

The classic catalog picture of the Omnimill was the machine cutting a curved vane tapered impeller out of a solid blcok of aluminum.

Unbelieveable fortunes were spent and lost developing these machines and the others like them.

They should be preserved if only to show that the modern CNC's we have today came about through ingenious designs and by tremendous amounts of effirt.
 
J, while it would be nice to have a working machine, I'm thinking in terms of just "statues" really. After all, almost no manual machines in museums are actually "run" anyway, so I would expect no more of NC pieces. Having the control X,Y and Z tube wires aglow with their faint numbers would be good enough..or perhaps a rotary table turning for some "effect"


I just thought it would be a shame for some of the more interesting and popular at the time, NC machines to be completely extinct...not one single example left anywhere of the NC machine tools that started a second industrial revolution in machine adaptability, accuracy, efficiency, capabilities, "editable" automation, and later..the marriage of CAD and CAM.

=====================================

Jim, the machines you mention would be wonderful to preserve at least one example of indeed...but aren't those physically huge ? Especially with all their associated seperate electrical boxes and hydraulics, would be a major PITA to set up.. even for a display only situation. Still, if I had the space and "disposable income" I'd set those puppies up somewhere !

Aren't you "retired" now ? What's your eave heights and square footage ? ;)
 
The early Ekstom Carlson Woodworking NC routers are starting to dissapear slowly. Swiss Plywood claimed to have the first one. Model 3100 They just cut it up for scrap this year. If I would have been in town I would have tried to take it and store it til i had room to set it up. I almost cried when I saw the rusting base on a flat trailer. A real piece of history lost.

Dan
 
Another reason a lot of the early NC machines will not be preserved is because they were mostly so darn UGLY!
The mid 60's to early 70's, when most of them were made, was the absolute low point for most american industrial design.
Remember the Ford Fairmount? or the K car?
Similar uninspired design was occuring in almost every field, including machine design.
We dont usually think of machine tools as being "designed" from an aesthetic standpoint, but in fact almost every machine tool ever made was designed- that is, conscious decisions were made about how the tool would look.
Early iron is beautiful, mostly because of the design.
The art deco lines in an original Bridgeport, a 10EE, or a 40's shaper are unmistakable.
But the time period of most NC tools was a time of very squared off, clunky designs.
One notable exception, which I would love to own myself, is the Milwaukee-matic, designed by notable industrial designer Brooks Stevens, who also designed the Jeepster.
milwaukeematic-mill.jpg
 
Mid sixties, P&WA had a Sundstrand Omni mill set up near the front of the plant - the space alloted was at least 40 X 40 ft, which only gave a little room for big parts to sit around in. About the only other NCs they had in use were B&S tape drills and several Milwaukee Matics. I did run one tape Bullard briefly, but not in East Hartford. Must of been North Haven.

John
 
Ries, a valid point...the Moog is pretty ugly too...that gracefull Bridgeport head seems to be encased in an alien head lock of some sort..but hey, that doesn't deter me too much. I think of the oohs and ahhs that a brand new Moog must have caused when it hit the new owners production floor for the first time.

Interesting about Brooks Stevens...he also designed my favorite runnabout, the 1957 Cadillac Sea Lark.

sea%20lark.jpg


I'm been looking for one of these for years, even going so far as looking in Cadillac, Michigan newpapers of the era looking for clues of employees and such. Others in the Antique & Classic Boat Society looking too...none have been found yet. Have yet to find anyone with definite production numbers..probably just 10 or so made. Probably all gone, as although deck and fins were fiberglass, the hulls were molded plywood and the glues back then weren't too good.

(I'm having a Deja Vu...have we discussed this before ?
)
 
Dunno, don, You gonna try to save an example Keller tracer mill too? (I picked on that because its so darn huge, and I think there were only a few ever made)

That's a "bridge" machine from all hand control to 3 axis N/C.... the "program" is in the model..... so that'd be important in your museum.
 
The Science Museum published a very nice book featuring their choicest pieces, title "The Making Of The Modern World", published in 1992.

It includes "The First Flexible Manufacturing System", the Molins System 24. They must have some Molins machinery, but I am not sure what. There is a photo showing part of a Molins twin spindle mill.

According to the book, Theo Williamson came up with this idea in 1965 while working for the Molins Machine Company, Tobacco machine manufacturers, London. He was also one of the pioneers of NC in the UK, having worked for Ferranti previously.

The idea was to have several complimentary machine tools all under the control of one digital computer, which also controlled a conveyor system that moved workpieces between machine tools.

The intention was to have a system that could run for a 16 hour night shift, with a day shift to load and unload the system.

"The computer controlled... worksetting, resetting, inspection, unloading, program tape selection, cutter changing and loading and rescheduling in the event of machine failure...in addition the system was to use binary coding for identifying the pallets which carried the components from one location to another".

IBM purchased the only full (prototype) system, but components of "System 24" were sold to others.

However, it says that events in the USA during the 1960's (advances in cheap micro-electronics) allowed companies like Cincinnati Milacron to develop simpler and cheaper systems.

So, it was too expensive for the market, and Molins dropped the idea. But the idea spread throughout the production industry, and the remnants can be seen in Flexible Manufacturing Systems and Computer Intergrated Manufacture (so says this book)

So the Science Museum says System 24 was ahead of its time in bringing together the newly emerging computer with NC machine tools - an intergrated sytem that could manufacture components with very little human intervention.

"The result was one of the biggest single developments in the history of production technology in the twentieth century".

I find it interesting - a man and a tobacco machinery company come up with something really useful - good ideas don't always come from the obvious places.
 
Don:

Now that I am "retired" I am working on my non-propfi tax status. (I have ALWAYS been non-profit).

The place has ten foot doors and the front part has good ceiling height. As you might guess, this place is a museum already.


Reis, That MilwaukeeMil is Oogly. Hardinge had one and I saw it machining the apron castings for the HLV_H lathes. Those things workes slowly and laboriously. ATF-Davidson had one working on a part for the small "Chief" printing presses. It was actually slower than doing the part using a tumble jig on a multi spindle drill press.

At the same plant when I was taking a tour, they had an American "Hustler" NC lathe. The machine had come to a stop with the carbide tool still in the cut on a press cylinder. A ham-handed union puke had the electronics cabinet opened up and circuit cards all over the place. Well, so much for THAT NC machine!

In 1980, I read an extensive article in a trade rag abut a John Deere plant that was havng no end of trouble with their NC controls. They traced it back to noise in the electrric power lines.

Noise in the line?

In a shop with a zillion big induction motors?

Nooooooooooo!

I used to say that those old NC's would catch a fever. They would get a bit hot and then they would get a mind of their own. Their favorite trick was failing to come out of rapid traverse.

Many of the old NC's didn't have interlocked doors, they didn't have any doors at all. When they were idle, they could take a notion to start. You wanted to have a quick way out at all times when working around those machines.

The first GE Mark Century controls were tape readers, that's it, no macros, no canned cycles, no nothing.

If you wanted to make a move, you had to command the rapid traverse clutch, then command the rapid traverse motor and then command the feed and the feed rate and hope that the feed command would supercede the RT commands.

Thwack, Thwack, Thwack one bit at a time on the Friden Felxowriter. Hope that what you saw on the paper was what was actually punched in the tape. No way to dry run except on the machine.

Yeah, buddy! The old NC's wuzz a job for Manly Man! Your nerves had to be a better alloy than the steel you were cutting!
 








 
Back
Top