If you were to buy a rotary table again- would you change it’s size?

[hovercraft57]

buy the largest that fits your machine and lifting is out ,,, make a table that is attached to the the milling machine and swings out of the way and then swings into place to set the them both the same elevation and slide the rotary table onto the swinging table clamp and swing the tabled rotary out of the way remember swing don't lift,,, did I say swing

 

[trevj]

For quite a long period of time, I was "the guy", in a Military Machine Shop, making CF-18 parts and such.

For a period of several months, we kept the R/T, a Universal Dividing head, and one to two vises, pretty much permanently mounted on the table of our main milling machine (A Varnamo Universal mill).

I can say with some authority, that had we not suffered the arrival of a bit of an 'Old School' minded prig/idiot of a supervisor, they would probably still be mounted! By old school, I mean he was stupid enough to demand that whether we were actually finished the job or not, the only 'right' way, was to pull down the whole set-up, so you could piss around with it for at least half of the next (should have been) productive day, trying to get your rigging back where you finally got it to so it would work!

Needless to say, if there was an up-side, it was that, like the use of a four jaw chuck, we became VERY proficient at mounting and de-mounting the tooling we needed.

I can also say with authority (spinal fusion surgery!) that a hydraulic lift table, and an overhead lift, no matter HOW simple, beats all hells outta busting your back and knees (got them too, buggered) trying to manhandle heavy gear in to position!

 

[buckbrush]

Wow that sounds like an interesting job.

 

[trevj]

Wow that sounds like an interesting job.

Parts of it were. Parts of it were just incredibly wasteful, and intensely frustrating. There was a lot of systemic residue left over from the prior history of the CF, back when it had nearly twice or more as many warm bodies as it had at the time I was working there. Bosses were convinced that any adjustments or repairs to the equipment were someone else's responsibility (because at one point, there actually WAS an entire section of guys on each Base, that JUST did or arranged for machinery repairs, but by then, long gone, for eg.) So I learned not to ask, about some stuff, and taught the apprentices that yes, they too, were capable of refilling an oil reservoir, or diagnosing and adjusting the backlash nuts on the ball screws of the CNC knee mill! Simple User Maintenance!

At one point (because I had been expressly forbidden to fix it myself!), we paid for a tech to drive from Edmonton, to Cold Lake two times, once, so I could point at the dead Memory Battery in the CNC Mill and hand the guy a printout of the battery part number and source, and a second time, to spend ten minutes installing it. It was a $12 battery, from Mouser!

To the plus, we benefited from equipment that had been bought at a time when the CF had sections of guys in Ottawa, who would consult with the Units, decide what tooling or major equipment was appropriate, then buy container loads of it, and push that out to all the units, so they all had very similar machinery to hand, allowing a guy trained pretty much anywhere else in the Forces, to be able to come up to full speed in almost any shop, on any Base. At one point, you could have walked into any machine shop in the CF, and seen, at the very least, the same Varnamo UM2 milling machines, and the same Colchester Master 2500 lathes, almost as a guarantee, for eg. The CF had it's own Supply Warehouses in several locations, and spare machines were in storage awaiting need, so a Unit did not have to wait long periods, in order to replace broken machinery. All incredibly expensive, and manpower intensive stuff, easy targets for the budget cutting crew to destroy.

I miss the stock racks, the well lit and spacious shops, the broad selection of tooling available. I don't miss the systemic issues.