Cool shaper sled

[Erik Loza]

Profil 45Z shaper installed in one of my customer's shops. They had previously been doing all their cope and stick work on a motley assortment of old stand-alone shapers (a pretty common scenario, actually) and were struggling with consistency, wasted material from botched runs, etc. Anyhow, they replaced three shapers by going with this one but check out the cool sled they grafted onto the Profil from one of the older machines. It's basically an aluminum bar stock "cage" with some pneumatic clamps off a Ritter machine. He just ordered an extra steel gib bar to bolt it down the the slider with. Comes right off with an allen wrench. I thought this was pretty slick.

Erik

Creative Cabs Profil 45Z.JPGProfil 45Z rail-and-stile.JPGProfil 45Z pneumatic sled.JPG

[Patrick Kane]

Looks stout!!

How were they screwing up separate machines? Once they are set correctly, it should be off to the races after that. Certainly a reason to upgrade if you want to turn the footprint of three machines into one. The profil has saved presets, right?

[ChrisA Edwards]

I like that, might have to fabricate something like that myself.

[Warren Lake]

Here is a set up on one shaper that ive taken apart at the moment and will redesign. It air clamps via toggle switch, I use foot peddles so will change that out. Has precision guides from front to back but it also has an outside bearing and and precision guides and bearings below to go in and out at the same time. You put your template on the plate under the sliding table and the bearing follows that. I doubt these linear bearings like high dust then one or two boot seals were on their way out as well. still slid nicely. There are the things you see in the old shops that had many to most europeans. Often a guy who crafted custom stuff and that was his job in the shop, modify and improve stuff. Have some ideas to experiment with.

Capture.jpg

[Erik Loza]

Looks stout!!

How were they screwing up separate machines? Once they are set correctly, it should be off to the races after that. Certainly a reason to upgrade if you want to turn the footprint of three machines into one. The profil has saved presets, right?

Yeah, the Profil is programmable. You just create a library of tooling and recall whatever profile you want to run. In the photo, you can see that he has two cutterheads stacked. So, one profile for the upper tool and then another for the lower tool and the guys can't mess it up.

With older machines, sometimes it's a case of the machine just being overworked or being asked to do too much (most of the shapers you see in shops like this are quite small or lightweight by today's standards; Weavers, etc. NOT big tanks.) but also, operator error. For example, they could have three shapers, each set up with the "common" rails/stiles or cope/stick, Then, they get a job where it's a different profile and someone has to reset one of the machines. That seems to be where lots of the problems lay.

Erik

[Erik Loza]

Capture.jpg

That is AWESOME.

Erik

[Warren Lake]

yeah and forgot to mention the precision guides that go in and out are in two air pistons and you put what air you want to get the pressure you want on the bearing as it rides the template, how spoiled is that. I harp on old guys a lot.
stuff not in books, lots of shops didnt share stuff, some did.