New to me Ammco 7" Metal shaper

[140mower]

Moving it manually in L or R, does not appear to be healthy.

In what way? Or better put, how doesn't it appear healthy.
It's pretty rare that I have hand fed horizontally, it is all in the timing and unless you give yourself half a mile of stroke on the back side it's hard getting a consistent feed, or at least for me.
But I do put it in neutral and wheel it back and forth during setup and it should move freely unless the locks are dragging or gibs are out of adjustment.
I also leave it in neutral any time I am cutting on the vertical or some angle and hand feed with the vertical slide. Shapers make nice dovetails...... Cheaply

 

[140mower]

Another question.

It seems to me that the ratchet in the power feed limits the feed rate settings to multiples of the pawl clicks. So the minimum feed isn't really the settings, it's one click which is about 15° or so. Does this sound reasonable? Would a slight gibb tightening change this?

I don't think a gibb adjustment is going to effect the feed rate. You have it right in that anything less than enough to engage a tooth isn't going to be able to move the table. So one tooth is your minimum advance. As long as your pawl can still engage it, I suppose you could cut a finer feed gear as mine aren't really a gear.

 

[Susquatch]

In what way? Or better put, how doesn't it appear healthy.

It seems like not a good idea to leave the feed engaged and crank on the hand wheel. I am thinking it might overstress the backlash, result in excess wear in the screw and nut, wear out the ratchet, or maybe even break something.

But I do put it in neutral and wheel it back and forth during setup and it should move freely unless the locks are dragging or gibs are out of adjustment.

There is the catcher. You put it in neutral. I said it seemed unhealthy to leave it in Left or Right and then crank it. I didn't say anything about neutral cuz I assume that's ok.

 

[140mower]

It seems like not a good idea to leave the feed engaged and crank on the hand wheel. I am thinking it might overstress the backlash, result in excess wear in the screw and nut, wear out the ratchet, or maybe even break something.

For ordinary setups etc, I agree that it makes no sense to have the pawl engaged. However I don't see any harm at all in, say you are squaring up a u type shape, between the two cut surfaces, winding the handle like crazy to just before the second cut with the feed engaged.
I wouldn't try going against the direction of rotation though.......

 

[140mower]

This is a pretty basic book on the operation, but answered quite a few questions for me when starting out.

This one is a little bit drier reading, but it too has its share of answers, and is a little more advanced.

 

[140mower]

This is the picture I used to create my shear tool....

 

[jcdammeyer]

You folks are awful. Here I'm trying to reduce the number of projects and along comes this thread on shapers which was #3 on the list after foundry and lathe.

The Metal Shaper

Build your own Metal Shaper. Exotic is a mild adjective when applied to this shaper. It will cut splines, keyways, gears, sprockets, dovetail slides, flat and angular surfaces and irregular profiles. And all of these with a simple hand-ground lathe tool bit. Obsolete in modern industry, of...

www.google.ca

And tonight I pulled out my book and started looking through it. Even have a print of an email posted to the Gingery_Machines Yahoo group on improvements to the shaper. (circa 2006)

And a hand written list of what to cast in what order...

Aarrrgggghhhh!

 

[Susquatch]

I don't think a gibb adjustment is going to effect the feed rate.

I had speculated that a tighter Gibb might act like a pawl. It was just speculation. It would probably stick both ways and be useless. And also accelerate wear.

You have it right in that anything less than enough to engage a tooth isn't going to be able to move the table. So one tooth is your minimum advance. As long as your pawl can still engage it, I suppose you could cut a finer feed gear as mine aren't really a gear.

Mine isn't a gear either. It's just an eccentric on the bull gear shaft.

 

[Susquatch]

This is the picture I used to create my shear tool....

Thanks for the two book references. I've been planning to look for a few good books. I'll start with those.

Thank you for the shear tool photo. It was perfect for me. Somehow or another my brain was fixated on a flat tool shape the same as I ground for my lathe. So stupid sometimes.

If the lathe surface is round and the tool is flat, then it makes total sense to reverse them so the tool is round when the surface is flat. Can't believe I didn't think of that.

I don't see why the big relief on the right side of the photo of the tool end view though. I don't see why that is needed.

Not an easy profile to grind either. I'll have to see if I can find a concave grinding wheel cuz I don't think my hands are that agile anymore.

 

[historicalarms]

View attachment 64036
This is a pretty basic book on the operation, but answered quite a few questions for me when starting out.
View attachment 64038
This one is a little bit drier reading, but it too has its share of answers, and is a little more advanced.

NOPE!! not even gonna go close to those books...every time I research something it become an obsession to own something I dont need

 

[Downwindtracker2]

Oh dear, another book review on shapers . I paid $50 for my project shaper. I've spent a lot more than that on books. A fun You Tube videos are by Rustinox . I found his by a recommendation in Home Model Engineeers forum, I think it was. They had asked about book recommendations and his videos came up.

 

[Bandit]

As to post #200, as others have said, and yourself, tightening the gibs to much is going to add wear to the feed screw etc. and possibly/likely over load the feed pawl.
As each tooth advances the table on my shaper, about .003in. , the depth of cut is perhaps the important thing. My figuring, lead screw—13tpi, .077in/turn, 25 teeth on pawl wheel. Often my advance is 3 teeth, depth of cut about .005in. for mild steel/alumin, cast iron, finish dependent, tool bit shape, and how the machine sounds, feels, and amount of material to be removed. These are 1in. and less length of cuts or sometimes interrupted cuts. It ain’t a big mo’cine, and don’t want’s a broke it!

 

[Susquatch]

Yes,

It ain’t a big mo’cine, and don’t want’s a broke it!

That's EXACTLY how I feel. Mine is beautiful just the way it is.

I don't plan to do anything with the Gibbs other than make sure they are adjusted to specifications.

Besides, my additional analysis says that the Gibbs really won't affect the feed anyway. As has been said, the pawl does all the turning. I get a max of 7 clicks of the pawl when the off center arm driver is maxed out and evened out. It is possible to only get 6 clicks at the max swing if the arm isn't optimized - which is probably why it is adjustable.

If there are 24 pawl teeth, then each click is 360/24 = 15° per tooth. If the feed screw is 13 tpi, then pitch is 1/13 = 0.077 per complete turn or 0.00332 per pawl tooth. In other words, the feed rate choices are roughly 3, 6, 10, 13, 16, 19, and 22 thou per stroke.

 

[Susquatch]

It's raining today and my bride is ignoring me, so I slipped out the back door and made a bee line to my shop. I'm tired of crawling around the shaper so I dragged it over to it's new spot and put it in place. It's now neatly lined up with my lathe, my mill, drill press, and bench grinders. If she knew what I did alone she would natter at me for an hour.

Very happy with it there.



With a 2" stroke length, it is just fine as is. With a 7" stroke, it's a pretty wild ride. So I'm thinking of jacking up the tool cabinet it is on and putting it on wood blocks. If that starts dancing, I'll see if I can find some rubber block to put it on instead.

So far so good.

Time to make a new tool post and grind a shear tool....

 

[140mower]

Here's a little earworm to go with your shaping experience.

 

[trlvn]

With a 7" stroke, it's a pretty wild ride. So I'm thinking of jacking up the tool cabinet it is on and putting it on wood blocks. If that starts dancing, I'll see if I can find some rubber blockso put it on instead.

Hockey pucks are pretty inexpensive and can work well...

Craig

 

[Downwindtracker2]

Slovakian ones are $2 at CT.

 

[Susquatch]

Hockey pucks are pretty inexpensive and can work well...

Craig

Slovakian ones are $2 at CT.

I only briefly considered them cuz I don't want to remove the wheels. But at $2 each, I could bolt a stack together.

That said, the shaper frequency is very low and plain old blocks of wood are probably just fine. That way I could also make a cradle for the wheels so I don't need to worry about the stand falling off.

 

[Susquatch]

I just cut 2 wooden supports for my tool chest and put the chest on them lifting one pair of wheels off the ground.

It's WAAAAY better on the 3 lowest speeds. But the highest speed is still a wild animal trying its best to kill something. I'll cut two more wooden supports before I try something rubber.

@140mower - I found those two books you suggested and got the two lowest price versions from the same supplier. I feel bad for the next guy in line - the price almost doubles!

 

[jcdammeyer]

Nice looking shop!