Limiter shaper tooling (MAN) discussion

[Mark Bolton]

Ill be another one to chime in on the feeder first. I was chatting with Martin the other day and in part of the conversation was the fact that no matter how long youve been running a shaper, the times you have to manual feed should always pucker you up a little bit. Even though the feeder is a painful expense, once you rip off that bandaid it will be the best thing youve ever put in your shop. The shear reduction in operator fatigue and stress alone is worth it. Cut quality, cutter life, safety, it just goes on and on. There are still things that have to be hand fed but to be honest its super rare for us. I wouldnt even buy a shaper without a dedicated feeder period

[brent stanley]

The worst part about the video is that the operator could have been climb cutting with a stock feeder.Just tilt the feeder so one wheel his the work, and set the angle of that wheel to press against a (preferably metal, not plywood) rub bearing. Those jigs would work fine with a feeder. The tight inside "U" shaped molding was particularly prone to turning into a merry-go-round if the work bounced.

That inside curve made me clench!

[Mark Bolton]

That inside curve made me clench!

If you just watch his face you can see that he is clenching as well. I remember watching that one a long while back and thinking if that were me I'd be just like him and trying to get through them all while I had the nerve. They were all set up well but it seems no matter what when you stare at that cutter block for a second or two it would be very easy to shut the machine down and say, lets go have another cup of coffee and think this through one more time.

I always remember an instance in my late 20's. Had a friend with a large circle saw mill. 54" blade, Cat Diesel power unit. I would help him saw on rare occasions. I was standing at the end of the feed and was in a bit of a fixed stare looking at the blade and I remember clearly shuddering and shaking my head and shoulders as I snapped out of it. He over at the setworks getting the log ready and watched me and he burst out laughing and nodded at me. Reading his lips he say laughingly "you just thought about it didnt you?!". We both laughed knowing that I had thought man-o-man, if someone tripped or lost their footing and fell into a wide open, unguarded, 54" saw blade..

I have a similar shudder often times at the table saw, shaper, bandsaw,..

[Mark Bolton]

Thanks everyone for the input. I'll order a DC40 and smart stand tomorrow along with some MAN tooling. Today I have to paint a wall of new cabinets. The doors can be built later but I need to get the cabinets in service ASAP.

We have a DC40 on one machine that we change up often. Super nice feeder. Be ready, its massive and the smart stand is equally massive.

[Mike Cutler]

Mike

we didnt have a feeder and likely not ideal for what we did at the time. I remember standing over a shaper that sounded like a 747 at the airport shaping an oval mirror frame. The jig had only two handles one on each end. We put free knives into a ball bearing head on set up, knives were serrated heads were Winconsin. Wish I remembered what RPM they ran it at at the time, 3,500 RPM the number ive been told is max. It was pretty unnerving. big old cabinetmaker real deal standing over you as you tried to not let him see your arms shaking I always thought that jig was made wrong it should have been a matching shape so you could do hand over hand. The way it was with a handle at each end was really awkward as you changed hands. Knives were thrown once while I as there. Then years later one maniac did it at least a few times while i was there.

I think of the old guy he said they had two shaper operators (400 plus employees that shop) and the two guys worked in a room by themselves doing big church windows with huge cutters. Said they were laid out on the floor as at times they were so large.

Warren
Kind of the same here. I went through school in the 70's and everyone was kind of making the same types of projects. I don't think a Jr. High/High School kid would have the discipline to make an entire cabinet set. Maybe that's why there was no power feeder.
A lot of guys were trying making their own guitars. You could buy an old Silvertone, Kay, or Tedesco, at a swap meet for $5.00. Take the neck off and try to make you own Gibson SG copy. We used to make these really stupid mirrors with black lights in them also. Why we thought adding a fish tank bulb to a mirror was cool, I don't remember, but we did. Those were the kind of projects we were using the shaper for. Black light poster frames were popular too. I bet our parents laughed themselves silly at the junk were making. Better than the resins, plastics, and ceramics classes. About 90% of the projects coming out of those classes was, well, lets just say you could call them were very "arty" pipes.
It was a lot of fun and I don't remember anyone getting too terribly hurt, so we must have learned something useful. I doubt there exist classes like those any longer. Too bad really.
If I had to do a lot of work with a shaper, I'd definitely get a power feeder. The safety and quality aspects, just can't be argued.

[Warren Lake]

mike i worked in a music store for four years, we sold most stuff. I had a tele a 335 and an ES-150. I got to handle lots of guitars and many brands. I always liked SG something comfortable about that guitar and nice body style. Thats neat they let you do that, I took a transmission night course once and the teacher let me bring in an M21 and rebuild it in class. Even told me where to get top brand parts at wholesale prices. Ah the good old days before the red tape brigade arrived.

The two old guys I knew when working in their own shops never had feeders. They both did excellent work. Never thought to ask them but know they didnt need them cause they learned in a different time and way and maybe the type of work they did. They had a whole pile of jigs and different add on fence things, usually stuff made out of scrap wood or plywood and usually pretty simple. One or two of those jigs did stuff the feeder does and it just left the hand fed motion which isnt that hard. Id be lying if I said I didnt enjoy hand feeding though, smaller profile and sharp knifes and nice shavings come off and its quiet.

I have them they are good. They do stuff lots of stuff really well. Know id appreciate one of he newer fancy dancy ones on the nice arm. Have a few brands of older european ones and maneuvering them around to where you need they are not very user friendly.

[Mike Cutler]

Warren

I started out on the bass guitar, eventually I also ended up on the guitar.
The SG's were pretty $$$$ back in the 70's in So.Cal, but a new company from Japan was releasing SG and Les Paul copies, Ibanez. I probably owned at one time three of the original series Ibanez guitars brought to the states. Wish I still had them $$$$. I still have a '77 Artist EQ with a single factory phase shifter. It used to be Mackey Feary's guitar, at least that's the way the story goes, from his time with the band Kalapana.
I worked in guitar stores also and used to teach Jazz/Fusion.
Yeah, we had some pretty cool shop teachers. Once you got beyond the compulsory projects, they pretty much gave us free reign to pick a project. Had some fairly talented 13-17 year olds in those classes.

[Mark Hennebury]

Talk of school shops takes me back;

I went to school in England back in the 60"s we had a wood shop and a metal shop, i don't recall if we had a shaper in the woodshop. In metal shop we had some big lathes and a forge, i liked working on both.
They let me make a crossbow for a project; i made trigger mechanism in the metal shop and the stock in the woodshop, and i purchased a 100lb pull bowprod from B&P Barnett for it. When it was finished i was out in the playground firing it. It was strong enough to put a bolt through 2" of pine and poke out the back. Somehow i don't think that it would pass these days.

The only serous accident that i recall was i guy cut a finger tip off on the horizontal bandsaw in the metal shop, and the kids were throwing it around at each other. Ahh... the good old days.

I have a couple of power feeders, and like them, and wouldn't be without them, makes it easy to do occasional climb cutting also. but once in a while i do some hand feeding, it all depends.

[mark mcfarlane]

My DC40 has been ordered. Should arrive in about 5 days.

Another question on the tooling.

I'm looking at Whitehill's steel 1 1/4" 125mm * 55mm combi MAN rated head. 'Combi' in this context means the head includes rebate knives and knickers.

• Can one also use 40mm knives on this head?
• Can you use 40mm knives without the limiters?

I'm thinking that, for some quick one-off projects where I need to run 5-10 feet of trim..., it would be nice to be able to use some locally available, inexpensive 40mm knives rather than always buying 55 knives and limiters.

Cheers.

[brent stanley]

My DC40 has been ordered. Should arrive in about 5 days.

Another question on the tooling.

I'm looking at Whitehill's steel 1 1/4" 125mm * 55mm combi MAN rated head. 'Combi' in this context means the head includes rebate knives and knickers.

• Can one also use 40mm knives on this head?
• Can you use 40mm knives without the limiters?

I'm thinking that, for some quick one-off projects where I need to run 5-10 feet of trim..., it would be nice to be able to use some locally available, inexpensive 40mm knives rather than always buying 55 knives and limiters.

Cheers.

Hi Mark, I've done it before I had my smaller head, but there's very little projecting beyond the body of the larger head once it's secured in there so not all of the 40mm knives would work. You can run their 55mm knives in the smaller combi head though if you want but there's a bit of unsupported steel there and you have to be careful. The smaller combi head only had spurs on one side though and only takes the thinner steel. The larger combi head takes the thinner AND the thicker steel giving you more options and has spurs on the bottom as well. When I was agonizing over which one to get, David told me that they sell far more of the larger heads because it's so much more versatile.

B

[brent stanley]

Mark, their catalogue has more information and diagrams than their web page. I took a couple pictures of the combi head section for you.

B

20180801_133804.jpg

[brent stanley]

20180801_133822.jpg

The small combi head on the previous page.

[Mike Delyster]

I wish there were cheaper options for the finger kit. Tooling for extrusions isn't cheap though.

I’m a little late to the discussion, but I’ve used the Felder/Hammer Safety Bar kit on a couple of shapers.
Not as handy as the Aigner, but not as costly either. I believe SCM all so make bars similar to these.
http://us.feldershop.com/en-US/en-US...ction-set.html

Here are a couple of pictures, I all so make breakthrough inserts to put in place of the bars similar to what Brent does.

[Jared Sankovich]

My DC40 has been ordered. Should arrive in about 5 days.

Another question on the tooling.

I'm looking at Whitehill's steel 1 1/4" 125mm * 55mm combi MAN rated head. 'Combi' in this context means the head includes rebate knives and knickers.

• Can one also use 40mm knives on this head?
• Can you use 40mm knives without the limiters?

I'm thinking that, for some quick one-off projects where I need to run 5-10 feet of trim..., it would be nice to be able to use some locally available, inexpensive 40mm knives rather than always buying 55 knives and limiters.

Cheers.

I would pick up an additional cmt or amana 100mm head just for this purpose. They are cheap and work well. If you are trying to tool up inexpensively for short runs (and didn't plan on sourcing limiters anyway)

[mark mcfarlane]

Thanks Brent.

Mike, that looks like a pretty useful set of safety bars. I like that you can have a bar below the profile. I think I'll probably modify my existing fence so it is easier to add custom zero clearance inserts.

Jared, that sounds like the best solution, to just buy a 100mm * 40mm head when I need to add a quick profile. Amazon can get one to me in a couple of days .

Thanks everyone, as always, for the excellent help. Now I need to go call Whitehill.