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BIG surface plate...what to do...

RC99

Diamond
Joined
Mar 26, 2005
Location
near Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia
So I have found a surface plate for sale in this state... But it is fairly large at 100 inches X 60 inches, 12 inches thick.... oh and 3 tonnes in weight...

Realistically it is much larger then I need and thus am unsure of what to do.....

The catch is, it may be the only plate that will come up for sale within this state for decades... Surface plates do not grow on trees here, and when they do come up they are old ones that look like a miner has been prospecting them with his rock hammer..

What to do is the question..
 
So I have found a surface plate for sale in this state... But it is fairly large at 100 inches X 60 inches, 12 inches thick.... oh and 3 tonnes in weight...

Realistically it is much larger then I need and thus am unsure of what to do.....

The catch is, it may be the only plate that will come up for sale within this state for decades... Surface plates do not grow on trees here, and when they do come up they are old ones that look like a miner has been prospecting them with his rock hammer..

What to do is the question..

Buy the rock. You have a truck with a Hiab crane plus a ton of farm equipment, I fail to understand the problem....

PDW
 
I've posted this before; one of my great recent regrets:

At the Hardinge factory auction, they sold 2 that size. One went for $50, the other for $100.
I wanted to bid so bad, but was afraid my wife would kill me on the rigging to get it over the hill to my shop.

As it turns out, she was extremely peeved that I did _not_ buy one or both, so she could sand blast patterns in the granite and put one up on end for my shop sign, or for yard art. She still asks when I get an auction flyer: "do they have any of those really big granite blocks?"

:(

Buy it. If the price is right, you're more likely to regret not getting it that the opposite. And if there is no space, turn it into a marker/monument/shop sign. :)

smt
 
do you know what grade it is/was? for my purposes, for example, grade b would be useless.
 
The problem is the outlay of money that could most likely be better spent elsewhere on lathe and mill tooling..
The lathe and mill tooling will still be there ;)

If you're sure you will never need anything this large, then let it go. Regardless of how cheap something is, or how much it sold for when new, if something has no real value to you, and no resale value to anyone else, it's not worth buying. I always laugh when I see somebody buying something on the pretence "do you know how much these things cost when new?" (More often accompanied by a nod toward a pathetically small clapped out rust encrusted POS shaper that last turned 80 years prior!). But I think you'd need to be quite sure in your mind, as realistically what do you think the chances are of anything like this coming up again in your area?

So, when will you be picking it up :D
 
OK, you say surface plates don't come up for sale in your state, and that one is larger than you need (larger than a lot of people need.) So if I were you I'd think hard about buying it, cutting it into suitable size pieces, and then selling the others. This assumes that (a) it starts out at the right grade and (b) you can lay hands on tools to cut it and (c) it will still be (mostly) the right grade when you are done. The location of the mounting points could be an issue.

I have a 2' x 4' surface plate in my shop (biggest size my pickup could handle at the time) and sometimes wish it was bigger.
 
That looks to be a very nice surface table. I'm not sure about the stand, it doesn't seem to fit the table to me. I once got the job of unloading and installing one about twice that size. For some reason or other I had to roll it over first. Maybe it came from the makers upside down. I know it weighed 8 tons ( 16,000 lbs ) because I weighed it on the crane scales. My heart was in my mouth until it was safely located on the stand the right way up !

Regards Tyrone.
 
The lathe and mill tooling will still be there ;)

If you're sure you will never need anything this large, then let it go. Regardless of how cheap something is, or how much it sold for when new, if something has no real value to you, and no resale value to anyone else, it's not worth buying.

That is just it I dare say I will never need anything this large... Half the size yea would be nice but not essential either... I did some calculations last night in bed... By the time you hire a forklift, get it on site, and get a carrier to bring it up, if I had any change from $2000 I would be surprised... collection and freight can really jack up the price...

$2000 could buy me a lot of needed lathe and mill tooling rather then a not needed surface table...

Story is it came from South Africa out of a business that did amongst other things machine tool rebuild work for the government (remember South Africa had sanctions against it way back then).. When the government changed the businesses thought that shifting part of the business to Brisbane to start a machine tool rebuild shop was a good idea.... Well seemed like a good idea when looking at it from South Africa anyway..
 
I see many large plates mounted low like that, I assume it's because the parts put on it are large/tall and hard to reach if the plate is waist height.

The catch is, it may be the only plate that will come up for sale within this state for decades...

So go ahead and buy it. That will assure that a more appropriate sized plate will appear for almost nothing much closer to you in just a few weeks.
 
The problem is the outlay of money that could most likely be better spent elsewhere on lathe and mill tooling..

View attachment 116914

Now that someone 'outed' it on the other forum, I'm going 'hmmmm' to myself given the current price. I'm used to being ripped off for freight anyway. If you're not going to bid on it, drop me a line because I might. I don't need it but that's never stopped me in the past....

PDW
 
Now that someone 'outed' it on the other forum, I'm going 'hmmmm' to myself given the current price. I'm used to being ripped off for freight anyway. If you're not going to bid on it, drop me a line because I might. I don't need it but that's never stopped me in the past....

PDW

... And in the spirit of the local forum you need to whine like a banshee to all who will listen about how much the price will go up now, and how other forum members are miserable for not letting you know personally, because, don't you know, we all run a book on which member is potentially looking for what machine/parts, even if they only mention it in passing, the delude yourself that you could have picked it up for pocket change if it weren't for that posting .... :D

Richard you know me, I firmly believe windows of opportunity open to all of us, and when they open it's up to us to jump through them. That's how I live life, and it's no coincidence that doing so provides what some call "luck" by those who always seem to make excuses for inaction. But I also know you're not one of those guys, and hence why we get on so well. Only you know whether this window is one you should decide to jump through, and not all opportunities should be followed up just because they're there. You know you're not going to cut this plate up, you know that it will be expensive in the long run, but likewise only you know whether it's worth the cost and effort.

It's a big plate, but unlike me, you work on big(ish) machines too. It wouldn't take too much stretch of the imagination to envisage a machine coming your way that would require a plate larger than we have. I think we currently have the same size plates iirc, and it doesn't take a very big casting or straight edge to fill it up!

Good luck with the decision.
 
Pete I have decided not to bid.... I sent a message to PDW earlier this afternoon..

At the end of the day it is just too big, and I think what use is a big plate to me that $2000 could not be spent elsewhere... I cannot think of a use for a plate this big other then scraping in long straight edges... And I now know I can scrape in long straight edges good enough for my usage on my small plate 1000X630 plate.

I also have discovered I can scrape in longer ways with my shorter straight edge...

Rather then a big plate maybe a talyvel or auto collimator..

I am getting a bit more pragmatic as I get older.... Having bought things I thought at the time was a good idea, only for them only to get seldom used... Then other things I thought would not get a lot of use, I seem to be using more then i expected...... Like the hor borer...
 
That sounds like a well thought through decision.

On the other hand, if it looks like my plate, just imagine how much crap you could have stored on it!
 








 
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