Gloat. The third leg of my shaping triangle comes home. Da Moulder.

[Dev Emch]

O.K. A while back I posted my theory of wood shaping as an analogy to a triangle. As some of you remember, on the left lower point, you have the tenoner which is optimized for coping style cuts. On the upper pinacle point, you have the shaper which can exist as either a tenoner or a moulder or perform a combination of these functions such as panel raising. On the lower right point, you have the moulder which is optimized for moulding cuts.

Moulders are in a class by themselves. They are simply power hungry pigs with massive appitites and a gross weight to match. As such, a reasonable moulder has evaded me. I have looked at planer moulders and I have looked at the smaller ones like smithway and setson ross XL moulders. Nothing has really struck me as ideal. The smaller moulders are smaller and as such are more valueable in the used market.

In doing research, I found that the most popular and one of the best engineered moulders of all time was the mattison and in particular the mattison 276. This is a four head push stick moulder. Newer moulders are pull feed and older moulders were push feed. That means that the first thing the wood encounters is the feeding rollers which in turn shove the lumber through the machine. Some say the pull feeds are better but for small operations, I dont think it really makes much of a difference. The only real pain with a push feed is you sometimes have to shove a dummy stick through to force the moulder to degorge your good stick. Not a big deal.

So in doing more research, I found that the mattison has machined steel bed plates which were hardened. That both side heads are on full yokes and these tilt. That the beast was machined for day in and day out service.

A moulder is effectively four shapers bolted to a common frame with a feed works of some type. The top head is 6 inches wide and sports a 10 HP motor. The left and right heads have 7.5 HP motors each and the last head is the bottom head which has a 10 hp motor. The feed system has two powered 5 inch rollers on top along with a lag bed chain on the bottom which is about 1 foot long. It tends to be more suited for smaller stuff which is just fine for me. The feed motor is a two speed 7.5 hp motor.

Moulders can be used to S4S stock in the range of 6 by 4 or less. They can be used to run flooring patterns and they can be used to run frame and rail stock from rough blanks. What I have found to be the case is that I can use more than one shaper. But on closer observation, the operations in question are often either tenoner or moulder centric. So instead of having three shapers, I am better off haveing a tenoner, a shaper and now a moulder. And my needs are virtually 98 percent addressed by having a machine limited to 6 inches in width. You could go to 8 or 10 or 12 or 14 inches in width but these machines are no longer optimized for thinner stock and have much larger weights, foot prints and power budgets.

Moulders tend to be expensive. Esp. the newer modern ones like weinigs. But the older mattisons are not as easy to set up and parts can be an expensive challenge to find. So I wound up matching wits with a junk dealer for this machine. He wanted it to melt down into china bound scrap whereas i wanted it to perform the function for which it was originally built. This time I was lucky enough to snag it from the scrappers laddle.

I hooked it up with a suicide cable which could test only two motors at a time. I tested each spindle motor and the feed motor and the machine runs like a top. At idle you can bearly hear the motors running but you can see the spindle shafts rotating. No vibration whatsoever. It runs as if it were brand new. There is a little noise in the lag bed drive but I can address that later on. With a set of cutters in wood, you will not be able to hear yourself think so I dont think that matters.

The other photos are of the turner dual wheel band resaw which was ripped out and scrapped for a mere $175 bucks. I am now kicking myself for not having at least made an attempt to get this one. Oh well, that is how the pickle squirts sometimes.

[Stu Ablett in Tokyo Japan]

Good for you Dev, too bad you could not save that machine from the scrap ladle, but you have done so for a lot of other machines.

Cheers!

[lou sansone]

nice score dev.

going to need some power to run that one.
best wishes
lou

[John Miliunas]

So Dev, do you happen to live next to a power plant or what??? :eek: Wow, what a machine. Be sure to let us know when you have it planted and running. Would love to see some pics of the output, as well! Congrats. :) :cool:

[tod evans]

dev, what year? square or round arbors? ball or babbit? and last of all how much? surely you`re not planning to run a convertor to power this are you? and what about chip removal, let alone dust collection? tod

[Bruce Page]

That’s some SERIOUS iron! I’m also impressed by the truck that can carry it!

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

Are you taking this to a hobby shop or a commercial operation?
How is to be powered converters or line 3 phase?
What thickness concrete ought that have under it?

[Dev Emch]

O.K. Guys.

First I have to say that this thing weighs 9200 pounds and I put it into storage for a week or so. I will be hauling this home using my Dodge 2500 3/4 ton cummins along with my bobtail gooseneck trailer. The trailer has four class E tires and is rated at about 14,000 pounds but I have third axel I use for extra heavy weights. That gives me 6 wheels if I need them. Aside from the class E rubber I use, there is nothing special here. This is nothing! I got snookered into hauling a few olivers to Las Vegas about a year or so back. The trailer was loaded to about 20,000 pounds or so. Maybe more. Still managed to get close to 14 MPG!

Secondly, this thing has a foot print of about 4 feet by 7 feet. So as far as a moulder goes, this is a baby. Its the heaviest woodworking machine I own but its not even close to being the heaviest machine tool I have had to move about.

The moulder can be run on phase conversion if you have a large enough converter and support hook ups. Under full load, (which is not often achieved), it will pull 125 amps. I may be adding a slaved rotary to pump up the juice.

Tod... the year of manufacture is 1938. Mattison built these from the twenties up into the seventies and possibly into the early 80s. Not sure when mattison finally shut its doors on woodworking machines. The engineering and design was so solid that this moulder is one of the most popular professional moulders ever built. When it comes to four head moulders, the 276 was the machine to have. It was the weinig of its day.

There are other mattisons out there. For example, the 229 which was an 8 inch moulder and the 226 which is (I believe) a 12 inch moulder weighing 14,500 pounds. For my needs, this is pushing the limits already.

All four spindles are 3600 RPM direct dirve spindles using standard super precision DMD technology. In otherwords, the spindles are set in precise ball bearings and this machine was completely rebuilt about a year ago.

The main heads are four knife corregated stock heads (6 inches wide) and the horizontal spindles are 2 1/8 inch spindles. There are two vertical heads and one is a 6 knife head and the other is an 8 knife head. The vertical spindles are 1 13/16 inch spindles. Right now, these use the older cone collet method of locking onto the spindles. Schmidt still makes these exact heads today. I will talk to schmidt about replacing the heads with standard hydro lock heads which many 276 moulders are using today. The PITA here is whether or not I need to fill in the spindle key grooves to use these and what that actually entails. Filler strips or welding and machining. Not sure yet.

These machines do use jointed heads. So if you have to, a 276 can be tuned to run as much as 240 feet per minute. To do this however requires one to use the optinal jointer attachments for the heads and to use hydro lock heads. In addition, the spindle speed needs to be boosted.

Many direct drive moulders were freaked (freqed). Freqing a moulder or shaper for that matter entails using a type of phase converter called a frequency changer. These are motor/gen sets that effectively convert incomming power from 60 cycles to outgoing power of 120 cycles. I know of one that is available right now and I am looking into the possibility of getting one of these.

The other option would be to change out the four contactors with VFD units and then double the hertz to 120. This option does not make me happy as I would be buying four VFDs for the sole purpuse of running only the moulder. The louis allis freq is easier to work on and it can provide 120 cycle power to any other machine that happens to be direct drive limited. I have also considered freqing my jointer to get the cutting speed increased.

But I am not doing anything about the speed until sometime next fall at the earliest. The spring building season has began and I have some projects that should have been completed dragging on so I have my hands full. Hopefully I can have the moulder moved and running by July 4th. I cannot see this happening any sooner due to my current work load.

[tod evans]

so the ol` square heads have allready been changed? and the collar babbits replaced with bearings? cool! this`ll save you a small fortune! there`s really no need to up the frequency unless you`re going to try and break into the short run custom moulding business where you need the fpm out the backside. everything will last longer if you keep your spindle and feed speeds slower and you`ll still get the same number of cuts per inch. the hydro heads are really nice for "high speed" moulders....this aint one! unless for some reason you`d just like to run `em or you can justify the expense of converting it to a high speed unit? now you need a knife grinder and spare heads, a set-up table, scales and steel:)

so, inquiring minds want to know! how many beans? .02 tod

[Geoff Barry]

Not to go way off-topic, but after lurking for almost a year, I actually joined today. Before I go any farther, I wanted to thank the "big iron" guys, most of whom are represented in this thread. As a self-taught rank amateur with primarily aluminum tools (have to work outside - Colorado is dry, but not so dry cast-iron would last), I have found the big-iron posts and shop tours both educational and entertaining. If nothing else, it's been fun just trying to figure out what some of these machines do, or why they would be needed.

I just have to figure out how to explain to the wife that moving to a house with a garage won't quite be enough space for my future needs . . . I saw an oliver 36" bandsaw in the denver/boulder craigslist last week, and felt lust in my heart. Sadly, I imagine a 12" delta with an aluminum table is in my near future.

So, at the risk of exposing my ignorance, what this beast does that the shopfox planer/moulder discussed in another thread cannot is:
- cut on all four sides at once
- more or less continuously
- and faster?

(along with not blowing away in a stiff breeze)

[Steve Clardy]

Welcome Geoff!!!! or is that Barry?

[Tyler Howell]

Ugg!:eek:
That's one big tooth pick maker.

[Dev Emch]

so the ol` square heads have allready been changed? and the collar babbits replaced with bearings? cool! this`ll save you a small fortune! there`s really no need to up the frequency unless you`re going to try and break into the short run custom moulding business where you need the fpm out the backside. everything will last longer if you keep your spindle and feed speeds slower and you`ll still get the same number of cuts per inch. the hydro heads are really nice for "high speed" moulders....this aint one! unless for some reason you`d just like to run `em or you can justify the expense of converting it to a high speed unit? now you need a knife grinder and spare heads, a set-up table, scales and steel:)

so, inquiring minds want to know! how many beans? .02 tod
Square heads? What square heads? Tod, this isnt a hermance or woods machine. Its a modern mattison and it was made the same way up into the 1980s. These never had square heads. They may have had slip knife heads but these are identical to modern heads except that they have no corregations to lock knives. It never had babbit bearings. It was shipped from the factory with direct drive three phase, ball bearing motors sporting allen bradley 709 starters. The top bearings on the spindles are ABEC class 7 milling machine bearings. So I am not sure what your talking about. These machines run about 80 to 90 FPM and with the factory jointing options and a freq can easily run 240 FPM. This anint no leather belt slapping antique.


I also need a straight line rip saw. If it were not so heavy, I would have snagged the Diel 750 SLR for about $500 bucks. But I am looking for an Ekstrom Carlson right now.:D

P.S. Edit. How many beans? Well what is cast iron scrap going for? About 90 bucks per ton? So how many tons in 9200 pounds?

[John Shuk]

Dev,
You are an inspiration....

[Dev Emch]

Not to go way off-topic, but after lurking for almost a year, I actually joined today. Before I go any farther, I wanted to thank the "big iron" guys, most of whom are represented in this thread. As a self-taught rank amateur with primarily aluminum tools (have to work outside - Colorado is dry, but not so dry cast-iron would last), I have found the big-iron posts and shop tours both educational and entertaining. If nothing else, it's been fun just trying to figure out what some of these machines do, or why they would be needed.

I just have to figure out how to explain to the wife that moving to a house with a garage won't quite be enough space for my future needs . . . I saw an oliver 36" bandsaw in the denver/boulder craigslist last week, and felt lust in my heart. Sadly, I imagine a 12" delta with an aluminum table is in my near future.

So, at the risk of exposing my ignorance, what this beast does that the shopfox planer/moulder discussed in another thread cannot is:
- cut on all four sides at once
- more or less continuously
- and faster?

(along with not blowing away in a stiff breeze)
The shop fox moulder is a knock off of the Williams & Hussey which has been made in New Hampshire since the cows came home last. The W&H moulder and the mattison moulder are both moulders but that is where the similarities end.

First of all, the W&H moulder has a single head or cutter and has no dedicated bed path. It is both portable and powered very lightly. This makes it small and portable.

The major advantage of the W&H moulder over my moulder is that it can cut curved or arch shaped mouldings. The mattison cannot. It is limited to working on straight runs only.

If you know what your doing, you can get the W&H to do virtually everything the mattison 276 does but at a huge investment of time. Extra time for slow feed rates and many multiple setups.

For example. If your doing flooring profiles. The mattison inputs blanks and degorges finished strip flooring in a single pass. To do this on a W&H, I will need a minimum of three specialized setups. The two sides profiles are the worst. In this case, I have to set up a special fence system to guide the blanks through. This is esp. important on the second profile as the first profile does not provide a good edge on which to ride through the planer. Thus you should have two strips of wood setup as a fence guide system to guide the strips through the moulder on edge with both faces perpendicular to the table. This setup needs to be done twice as the head height will vary once the first side profile is cut.

Then you get to repeat the setup for the back side in which case your loading up your back relief profile. The font face can be finished off using your planer which would be faster. At about 10 to 20 FPM and multiple passes and multiple setups, this is going to be both tedious and time consuming.

Then you have the bed plates. Shapers and other smaller moulder/planers etc. have cast iron tables which can wear down under heavy use. The mattison has machined and hardened bed plates. I can run railroad ties through this thing all day long and get hardly any wear.

Then there is the depth of profile. The mattison can excavate a much deeper profile on any of its four heads than most other machines can.

Then there are the cutter head options. I can run everything from insert carbide tooling to ground knives to slip knives (run for cover, he has slip knives!) to tersa heads. The W&H has a single knife option.

But as I said before, the W&H can cut arched mouldings which makes the W&H worthwhile to have in the shop.

Hope this helps a bit in your understanding...

[Reg Mitchell]

did you hold a gun on the guy when you were handing him the money Dev...:eek:

[Geoff Barry]

Dev,

Yes, that is very helpful. Having never seen a real production shop, and not being a professional, it can be hard sometimes to understand the significance of the difference between the hobby machines and the professional ones. I mean, I can "see" what the difference is, but I don't understand when the difference comes into play, if that makes sense. Before I ever started woodworking, I knew the difference between a router table and a shaper (well, by shaper I mean one of the 1.5 or 3 hp ones, not like the ones you and Lou have), but I would not have understood why somebody might want one over the other. So I appreciate these "get yer ass in the know" type of posts . . .

Steve,

Thanks - and yes, Geoff is the first name :)

[Dev Emch]

did you hold a gun on the guy when you were handing him the money Dev...:eek:

Not lately! The chinese are making rusty old iron more valuable than gold! Last week or so, several electrical companies were broken into and the burglers stole the copper wire spools. Now they have to lock up the copper wire at night. Hey Reg, need any copper wire? Ummmmm, yah, the spool just fell of this truck you see....:D:D:D

[Brian Jarnell]

You can pick up a good older foursider for about US$10000 here in NZ.

[Reg Mitchell]

LOLOL yea' I'm about ready to start wireing my place. My 3 phase box will be here wed., the PM # 10 here fri. I hope the F&E is still at work ready to be toted home to the shop. Milbury has newly sharpened knives and the F&E 5 new heads. The snoflake has new shoes and a friend of mine is bringing a 12" nortfield. The Oliver should be back together ummmmmmm in the not to distant future. The Oliver planer is shivering to be fired up to chew up some hickory for my new cabinets. So bring on the copper and lets party....:D :D :D

[Alan Turner]

Dev,
Just out of curiosity, what do you figure it will cost per hour to operate that beast in terms of electric company charges?

[Stu Ablett in Tokyo Japan]

What....?

You guys don't have three phase in your shops.......?? :D

[John Miliunas]

What....?

You guys don't have three phase in your shops.......?? :D

Why shore I do! Phase 1: Wire the circuit, install the outlet and breaker. Phase 2: Flip the breaker "On". Phase 3: Plug the dang machine in! :D :cool:

[Stu Ablett in Tokyo Japan]

Why shore I do! Phase 1: Wire the circuit, install the outlet and breaker. Phase 2: Flip the breaker "On". Phase 3: Plug the dang machine in! :D :cool:

Boy, you do it the easy way!

I have a few more "Phases", they include some skinned knuckles and bad words said, as well as extra trips to the lectric store, and searching for the stuff I "KNOW" I have, but can't find....... :D

[tod evans]

dev, i just read up on mattison, this must have been one of the first machines to offer outboard bearings in the collars? the ol` hermintance(sp) my friend owns has babbit caps. when did they get away fron the square heads? i thought it wasn`t untill the late 40`s. i know of an old gangrip i can call about from the same era if you`re interested? tod

[Matt King]

Oh, I want to see Reg's response here about the electricity cost.... When I picked up my bandsaw from him, we had a chat about that.... ~shaking head~ You folks that currently have 3-phase better hang on to your hats, because what he tells you (if'n he tells the truth! ;) ) will make you sick!

Reg? Oh, Reg? What have you to say, sir Reg? :confused:

Later!

Matt

[Jerry Olexa]

Wow!!! that is a bigun'. You're the man:)

[Pete Harbin]

That's it Dev! No more for you. The balance of the planet is starting to shift! You are in seroius jeopardy of sending us spinning off out of our solar system.

Cool score bud!

Pete

[Alan Turner]

Dev,
Just out of curiosity, what do you figure it will cost per hour to operate that beast in terms of electric company charges?

Is this question being avoided?

[Dev Emch]

Is this question being avoided?

That depends on many factors so there is no clean answer.

If I run absolute full load continous, I can burn about 120 amps. That is assuming full depth patterns with maximum feed rates on a 6 in by 4 in billet.

But since I am more interested in quality than quanity, I can back off on the feed rate which takes some of the intensity off the motors.

Also, depending on what your doing, you dont always need to run all four heads.

Lastly, if your running stock for any given project, your usually running a very short run of material. That is one of the reasons for having a machine like this.

Hope this sheds some light...

[Kirk Poore]

... the ol` hermintance(sp) my friend owns has babbit caps. when did they get away fron the square heads? i thought it wasn`t untill the late 40`s. i know of an old gangrip i can call about from the same era if you`re interested? tod

Ball bearings started coming in before 1920, and had replaced most babbitt bearings by the 1930's (as an example, my bandsaw & jointer, both from 1910-1920, were babbitt machines, while my shaper & mortiser from the late 1920s have ball bearings). Round cutterheads started becoming available between 1900 and 1910. However, square heads were still available into the 1930's from some manufacturers. I would imagine square heads lasted longer in molders & planers because safety was less an issue with these machines than on jointers or shapers.

Kirk Poore

[tod evans]

thanks kirk!