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Scraping Classs in South Dakota - 2019

Richard King

Diamond
Joined
Jul 12, 2005
Location
Cottage Grove, MN 55016
I have been asked to teach a class in Clear Lake, South Dakota the last week in September. Inside a small CNC shop. Clear Lake is about 3 1/2 hours west of Minneapolis MN. Anyone care to come? Think about it and let me know. I will need to have 6 full time students to make it happen. Also will accept 3 day students.

We now have 6 students attending the Texas class in a couple of weeks Feb 21 - 26

Have 5 students for the Springfield VT May Class

Also will be teaching in Austria in October for BIAX Germany again.

Shoot me a message if your interested in any of these classes.
 
That would sure be neat! But, I don't see it happening for me.

A small tangent, if I may inquire: there used to be a machine rebuilder roughly in that area of the SD. They seem to have disappeared a few years back; I merely assumed the owner retired or similar, but never actually did hear - maybe they're even in business yet, but somehow keeping out of sight for all I know. Any insight? Thanks!
 
A small tangent, if I may inquire: there used to be a machine rebuilder roughly in that area of the SD. They seem to have disappeared a few years back; I merely assumed the owner retired or similar, but never actually did hear - maybe they're even in business yet, but somehow keeping out of sight for all I know. Any insight? Thanks![/QUOTE]

That was Dale Kopman, he retired a few years ago. Wayne Efriamson of prairie mechatronics in Hazel, bought all of his machinery, or so I'm told.
 
Thanks for confirming that; I was thinking of Dale's Machine in Hayti. I hadn't heard of Prairie Mechatronics buying the machinery either, but that'd been a short trip for it.

I'd been in the shop once, but went a different direction on the application. Interestingly enough, and slightly more pertinent to this thread: after typing the above post I did a search here. They had come up a couple times, with at least one post not impressed with their way grinding work.
 
A few year back I rebuilt some Fedals for Bemis bag in Fergus Falls MN and we sent the saddle and base to Dales and he ground them on his converted planner with a Bridgeport Mill using a cup wheel. I hate to say he goofed it up, but he did or his operator did. They ground the front of saddle top ways deeper .015 out, Bemis didn't want to send it back to them as it was over there for 2 weeks. Cup wheel grinding is a super slow process. The way I corrected it I put .062" on one side of the table bottom and .047" Rulon on the other and scraped down the .062" to get the geometry right . Not something I would recommend doing as I always say grind both sides the same. They had Dales rebuild a Bridgeport and it looked good. They said the new operator didn't know we wanted it the same and only ground to clean up. We had sent a sketch and instructions, but he ignored our instruction figuring he knew better.
 
Were starting to get some real interest in this class. I was asked about JR's (The Host) plate size and here is what he wrote back.

I have 3 granite plates; Starrett 3"x 24" x 36" grade "A", what I believe to be an import granite plate which is 2" x 18" x 36" I would assume grade "B". I also have a smaller 3" x 9" x 12" Grade "A". I have not had any of them calibrate in quite some time so I am not sure if that is a problem or not.

Seeing will be driving I have a 3 x 12 x 74" Granite Straight Edge and a 40" Granite SE atkat inspection were with in .00005" I am thinkng of having the bigger one relapped at Tru-Stone Starrett in St Cloud MN anyway.
 
I haven't posted the dates. So here it is.

September: 3 Day weekend class: Heavy Metal Machine in Clear Lake SD. Friday September 6 - 8. This class has 3 students so far and we have room for 6 to 8 more. If enough want to take 5 days we can do that too....mix 5 and 3 day students.

JR the host says the folk he is talking to say it is a long time to September. But if you want to come email or PM me here and you are on the list. Over the years I have found it's better to accept a deposit to hold the spot from you. Like all classes...first come first served and if we get more then we can teach in a class we will schedule a 2nd class. PM me for infor or email me. [email protected]
 
This is my first post here so thank you for welcoming me to the group. I am looking forward to hosting the hand scraping seminar in September. If any one has any questions regarding accommodations please message me and I will do my best to answer questions or find information out for you. Heck its still early enough in the year that folks could make a camping trip out attending the class!
Heavy Metal Machine is the name of my business Heavy Metal Machine At this point I am a one man tool and die shop. I started building my shop back in 2003. I took me until 2016 before I had the guts to stand out in the real world to see I had what it takes to make it in the business. This has quite honestly been one of the most humbling experiences I have been through in life. Some of those experiences was buying equipment that I "thought" was sound stuff turned out to be total crap. Long story short is making a bad purchase here and there is what prompted me to want to learn how to better evaluate machine tool equipment and how to recondition it if possible. I will be honest with I am not a big bed time reader so needless to say most my learning comes from watching others and hands on with some trial and error. I'm not sure how I ever made it through vo-tech but I did manage to get through it with a passing grade. Nonetheless I started watching videos trying to pick up the techniques and reading a few posts here and there. It didn't take me long before I realized the information that I needed to acquire would be best learnt through an expert instructor. I happen to be on eBay one day and I seen a listing for hand scraping. Turns out it was Richard's listing in Texas I inquired about because I have family that lives down there. But as it turns out the seminar is on the opposite side of the state so I asked Richard about other classes. After some discussion we came up with doing a seminar that would be more or less central to those in the Midwest.
 
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I believe his name is actually Dale Koistinen and yes he did retire. Quite unfortunate to read about the machine they screwed up though. His son carried on in his own business doing equipment repairs mostly on CNC machine I think. I think he calls his business Granite Controls. I am not sure if he is running out of Hatyi SD or not.
 
Richard, were you planning on getting the 74" granite straight edge re-lapped prior to the SD class?

L7
 
Not sure if it helps things out but a while back I purchased a 12 x 18 lab grade granite square to set up and inspect equipment like my CNC mill.
 








 
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