THE SHOP

Here are a few pics of our shop I will let you just ask the questions rather then have me spout off about it.

Wow! Nicely lit. Well layed out and clean. Do you really produce anything there? I don't detect a single chip anywhere.

Mmmm, bridge crane. Mmmm.

Might as well spout, that will help formulate more direct questions.

well the pics aren't comming up for some reason I will try again.



I can tell ya what you are looking at right now. This is the headstock for the Summit 50" lathe it has a 28 foot bed and works very well just kinda clumsy to operate since its so big.
The next machine further back is a 15X48 Jet lathe peice of junk IMO then next to the stairs there behind the Jet is a doall vertical bandsaw about 36"er.



Now you are looking north into the shop from the office, the 50 in front then you can see the Southbend 39" behind and if you look further behind the SB you can see our TUG which is a 18" Engine.



Now your looking down the isle next to the heads of the lathes first is a Summit Radial drill 8' x 28", then our 36" Blanchard Grinder, then farther back you can just make out the controls and part of the table we have a Summit Horizontal mill ( soon to be replaced) its a POS, and then you can see the back of our POS Willis Vertical mill its the same size as series 2 Bridgeport. Behind the Vertical mill there are afew pedistal grinders and sanders in the far corner. I forgot to mention if you look right to the left of the column on the Radial Drill you can see our Doall surface Grinder under the offices next to the Bridge crane. There also is a OK cutter grinder and another little hardinge Surface grinder hand feed machine.



Now we are next to the Radial drill I am standing in the isle behind the lathes, this is our Marvel Saw ( absolute must in any shop) then next to it is our Scotchman Ironworker ( very handy) and you can see our 90 ton press and If you look real hard you can see the 150 hydraulic press sticking up in the air.



This is our little Haas Mini Mill its a nice little machine does great for our needs. I like to run it and us it any time I can.



Next to the Mini is our TM-1 Toolroom Mill its ok I hate that its not surrounded completely it works as well as the Mini but its slow.



And last but not least is our brand new not even hooked up yet SL30 Turning center its also a Haas. I am itchin to get it up and runnin.

The gantry crane for those who asked is just a 5 ton unit made by Bohl Crane.

And yes we do "Make" stuff in our shop its good to be clean the machines are cleaned very well everyday and they are super cleaned once a month. the floor is scrubbed twice a week.

I will tell you why so many Summit machines off the bat We got them for a package deal. and saved a ton of money. They aren't bad machines not the best but work well and are fairly solid built machinery, for an Italian made machine. The Doall stuff is ok also just old and parts are not avalible anymore. I will ad one more thing the Jet lathe Is a peice of Trash and its the best one that they sell Its 4 years old and is going fast. Spindle sounds horrible already and the motor took a crap already.

All in all our shop is ok we are soon replacing the horizontal with a Kuraki Boring Mill and the Vertical mill will be replaced by a Series II Bridgeport that a friend of ours is refurbing now and it will have a Prototrac MXII on it.
all for now

Too clean for me.I am a slob. Very nice shop.
I would show pics of our shop but you may never sleep again without having nitemares after seeing them.

Alright, so what do you build there? Job shop? build machinery? I suppose it's not too top secret if you are posting pictures. I would get lost in there. I prefer a "cozy" shop

its our maintenace shop at a nuclear power facility.

I used to run a Summit lathe like that years ago. Making hydraulic cylinder heads for some Cat project. An excellent machine, IMHO. Used to reduce dias. by 1.5" at a pass (cast iron), and thats only because I didn't have enough edge on the insert to go deeper.
Greg B.

"its our maintenace shop at a nuclear power facility."

Probably just broke some law publishing those pics.

No law was broken just some pics of the shop thats all.

Hey, stop building nuclear reactor parts on crappy Chinese tools!

Sorry, I just had to say that. <G>

Just teasing by the way. Wish the pix would come up. I bet we exceeded their bandwidth limits with all the curiousity.

Best,

BW

Mac
I'm also a nuke machinist at the Callaway plant,Don't you love RCP seals? What plant are you at, Palisades, Fermi, or DC Cook?

Our shop also shines, I'll try to learn how to post picks of it tomorrow.

Quitting time is almost here.

2-Ton

This is at fermi 2, 2 Ton is callaway a bwr or pwr?

bob we only have 1 chinese tool the JET lathe is it. The summits are Italian.

Mac
Callaway is a PWR putting out 1277 MWe today.
From what I hear a PWR isn't as crapped up as BWR.

Our shop also looks like a nascar shop. In preperation for an August INPO E&A visit we cleaned it up real good and painted the floors.
The plant manager told me that his expectation is to keep it looking like a nascar shop and I told him that I want our shop to be the leader in the nuclear industry.Boy did he eat that up.
Can you say benchmark trip to Fermi 2?
I just talked to my foreman and he'd like to go, just not in the winter.

Since I start vacation tomorrow, I'll start a new thread with pics of our shop in a couple of weeks.
Would you guys like to also see some pics of our last refuel where we replaced four steam generators and all new turbines.One steam generator weighs just less than 400 tons.
We had one of the biggest cranes in the country on site.

2-Ton
AKA: Don King

In general, what do you like better....the MiniMill or the Toolroom Mill?

the mini for speed and for the small machines its a bit more ridgid but for the size the toolroom is nice too.

That shop looks great.

I am a Machinist at the Nuke in Arkansas and our shop looks nothing like that.

Are you guys dedicated machinists or doing double duty as Mechanics?

I've been to Grand Gulf and River Bend and you've got those shops beat by a mile.

Hey 2 Ton,
Im in an outage now...we just replaced our Unit Two Pressurizer. Did a steam generator outage two outages ago.