Dev Emch
04-26-2005, 6:21 PM
Believe it or not, I just signed up to sawmillcreek. Lots of intense folks and I like that even it I believe the official color of a table saw is sky blue and not black:) So how about a belated gloat?
I would like to introduce you guys to the latest legal immigrant to the United States. This little girl left Bad Windsheim, Germany to make a living in the glorious United States. It was built in the south of Germany in the town of Bad Windsheim in a small factory that resembles a braverian mountain hotel. They even have window boxes full of fresh flowers in the summer. The machine tools are a collection of new and old. The planer is about 80 years old and the CNC lathes are euro modern. The company is actually run by a lovely lady. They have been at for about 100 years.
This is the TFS-1200 manual tilting spindle wood shaper with an HSK quick change spindle. There are so many options that it takes a few days to just figure out what you want on it. The major ones were the sliding table and the cast iron right side extension wing. You can get several different table options and sizes. Right now, there are fewer than ten of these in the United States and I think that number is even smaller. Martin lost out on this deal because they were not manual and I wanted manual and the machine is solid cast iron. It only weighs 4500 pounds however so its not as bad as it could have been. I think the matin with its concrete composite construction weighs more. All of that extra electrical junk really ran the price of the martin up as well. Options are great if they do something. Otherwise, its expensive bling bling that I dont want. I also ordered a swing away power feeder which allows you to swing the power feeder into position quickly. The fence weighs about 100 pounds and consists of the hofmann fence along with an Aigner guard and generic fence faces. It would be nice to have the Aigner finger faces but these are more than I wanted to pay for that option. I should have also ordered the option which allows you to crank up the fence and swing it out of the way on the right side but did not know it was available for this particular configuration. I thought it was only available when you ordered the electronics pod option which I dont want. I like the electricals tucked neatly out of the way under the right table extension.
The sliding table is unsual. It can fold out of the way or it can "fly" over the main table and be used as a tenoner. It can also be set up to work more or less as a wood milling machine. In these shots, I had to cut detailed jog boards for a maple flooring job I am on for use with an inlay. The terminus head needed to shave a gap within +/- 0.003 inches of accuracy! Like all things in machine work, its 9 parts setup and 1 part cut. Fit like a glove first time out.
This company does not grind tables. They do it the old fashioned way... they plane them. A metal planer is a monster machine that shaves off a swath of metal only about 1/4 inch or so wide and then reindexes for the next cut. This leaves a dead on flat table which is more accurate than most grinders can produce. The stripes you see are the tell tale sign that this table was planed. In the old days, metal planers were used all the time but as grinders got cheaper and quality standards went down, so did the need to use planers. Today, the are almost obsolete dinosaurs. But nothing beats a planed surface for woodworking machines! Not only are they flatter, but the striping is actually like tiny tiny corregations where the recess dips by about 0.0005 inches from the high points. This breaks up the sticktion resistance you often see when you run a very smooth hunk of maple through a polished surface like you have on some powermatics or jets these days. Notice the "tiger stripes" on the surfaces. I wax this with a good furniture wax and moving stuff through this shaper is a real breeze.
Also notice the big round donut surrounding the spindle. This is a turntable. If I needed to, I could rotate the fence assembly around in a circle to get the best possible angle of attack for the job I am doing. The spindle is also reversible so that I can do climb cutting. But please dont attempt climb cutting unless your using a powerfeeder!
Another photo shows the 30 mm HSK-80 spindle with an adjustable groover mounted to it. Now thats a router bit! The HSK standard is used by european metalworking machines and is one of the most accurate out there. You take a long T wrench/allen wrench and stick it down the hole on the top and rotate by 1/4 turn. This method is a unique to hofmann as most machines have draw cams run from below. But on a wood shaper, that is not practical! So the lock down cam or draw cam is run from above. I can release, remove, re-install and lock a spindle in about 7 seconds.
One concern I have is that the sliding table, which is mostly used for end grain cuts, does not have the chance to use the tilting spindle. There is an option to use a tiny, surface mount sliding table which bolts ontop of the main table and can use the tilt option but I have not had any need for it yet. A buddy of mine who has a similar shaper with this feature uses it for chair making all the time. I should get a chair commision so that I can go out and buy this auxillary table:)
At any rate, this shaper has seen quite a bit of use of late and is the most important machine in my shop these days. It will do almost anything. I even run router bits when I need to do blind dados. The other day, I had to prepare some glue in spline stock for the flooring job. I used a 1/8 inch half round porter cable router bit on this beastie. Works great. So I am selling off my old Rebel router table as that is no longer of any use to me.
It was very painful to get into this machine! This is my newest machine and its a 2004 and my oldest machine is an 1898 drill press. Its a line shaft drive, babbitt bearing drill press. I use it to run forstner bits as its speed is just perfect for this.
I would like to introduce you guys to the latest legal immigrant to the United States. This little girl left Bad Windsheim, Germany to make a living in the glorious United States. It was built in the south of Germany in the town of Bad Windsheim in a small factory that resembles a braverian mountain hotel. They even have window boxes full of fresh flowers in the summer. The machine tools are a collection of new and old. The planer is about 80 years old and the CNC lathes are euro modern. The company is actually run by a lovely lady. They have been at for about 100 years.
This is the TFS-1200 manual tilting spindle wood shaper with an HSK quick change spindle. There are so many options that it takes a few days to just figure out what you want on it. The major ones were the sliding table and the cast iron right side extension wing. You can get several different table options and sizes. Right now, there are fewer than ten of these in the United States and I think that number is even smaller. Martin lost out on this deal because they were not manual and I wanted manual and the machine is solid cast iron. It only weighs 4500 pounds however so its not as bad as it could have been. I think the matin with its concrete composite construction weighs more. All of that extra electrical junk really ran the price of the martin up as well. Options are great if they do something. Otherwise, its expensive bling bling that I dont want. I also ordered a swing away power feeder which allows you to swing the power feeder into position quickly. The fence weighs about 100 pounds and consists of the hofmann fence along with an Aigner guard and generic fence faces. It would be nice to have the Aigner finger faces but these are more than I wanted to pay for that option. I should have also ordered the option which allows you to crank up the fence and swing it out of the way on the right side but did not know it was available for this particular configuration. I thought it was only available when you ordered the electronics pod option which I dont want. I like the electricals tucked neatly out of the way under the right table extension.
The sliding table is unsual. It can fold out of the way or it can "fly" over the main table and be used as a tenoner. It can also be set up to work more or less as a wood milling machine. In these shots, I had to cut detailed jog boards for a maple flooring job I am on for use with an inlay. The terminus head needed to shave a gap within +/- 0.003 inches of accuracy! Like all things in machine work, its 9 parts setup and 1 part cut. Fit like a glove first time out.
This company does not grind tables. They do it the old fashioned way... they plane them. A metal planer is a monster machine that shaves off a swath of metal only about 1/4 inch or so wide and then reindexes for the next cut. This leaves a dead on flat table which is more accurate than most grinders can produce. The stripes you see are the tell tale sign that this table was planed. In the old days, metal planers were used all the time but as grinders got cheaper and quality standards went down, so did the need to use planers. Today, the are almost obsolete dinosaurs. But nothing beats a planed surface for woodworking machines! Not only are they flatter, but the striping is actually like tiny tiny corregations where the recess dips by about 0.0005 inches from the high points. This breaks up the sticktion resistance you often see when you run a very smooth hunk of maple through a polished surface like you have on some powermatics or jets these days. Notice the "tiger stripes" on the surfaces. I wax this with a good furniture wax and moving stuff through this shaper is a real breeze.
Also notice the big round donut surrounding the spindle. This is a turntable. If I needed to, I could rotate the fence assembly around in a circle to get the best possible angle of attack for the job I am doing. The spindle is also reversible so that I can do climb cutting. But please dont attempt climb cutting unless your using a powerfeeder!
Another photo shows the 30 mm HSK-80 spindle with an adjustable groover mounted to it. Now thats a router bit! The HSK standard is used by european metalworking machines and is one of the most accurate out there. You take a long T wrench/allen wrench and stick it down the hole on the top and rotate by 1/4 turn. This method is a unique to hofmann as most machines have draw cams run from below. But on a wood shaper, that is not practical! So the lock down cam or draw cam is run from above. I can release, remove, re-install and lock a spindle in about 7 seconds.
One concern I have is that the sliding table, which is mostly used for end grain cuts, does not have the chance to use the tilting spindle. There is an option to use a tiny, surface mount sliding table which bolts ontop of the main table and can use the tilt option but I have not had any need for it yet. A buddy of mine who has a similar shaper with this feature uses it for chair making all the time. I should get a chair commision so that I can go out and buy this auxillary table:)
At any rate, this shaper has seen quite a bit of use of late and is the most important machine in my shop these days. It will do almost anything. I even run router bits when I need to do blind dados. The other day, I had to prepare some glue in spline stock for the flooring job. I used a 1/8 inch half round porter cable router bit on this beastie. Works great. So I am selling off my old Rebel router table as that is no longer of any use to me.
It was very painful to get into this machine! This is my newest machine and its a 2004 and my oldest machine is an 1898 drill press. Its a line shaft drive, babbitt bearing drill press. I use it to run forstner bits as its speed is just perfect for this.