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"I guess if you buy really old,
unsupported machines, you have to get two mills, and two lathes, so you can have
one good machine to make parts for the one that's broken
:-)"
Nope, you use the machine to replicate
parts. That's the really great part about this whole machine tool thing. If you
have a lathe, it can theoretically replicate itself. That is the reason the
lathe is THE most valuable machine in the shop, and the basis for all machine
work (the Gingery lathe that Rick C. mentioned creates itself in this way). The
FIRST machine tool was the lathe. All others came from there.
Unofficially, the lathe was also
the first horizontal milling machine (using a milling attachment), until
Browne&Sharpe made the first dedicated horizontal mill in 1880 (yeah, I was
surprized it was that late, myself). The first vertical mills didn't appear
until the early 1900s.
Milling operations prior to 1880 were done
on lathes with milling attachments, or with shapers; a reciprocating motion
machine that used a single point cutting tool like a lathe to flatten or shape a
surface (thus it's name). They also had planers for flattening large surfaces
and drill presses for boring work on large pieces.
To make practically anything you can
imagine, short of jet engine parts, all you need is a lathe, mill, and shaper or
shaper head for the mill.
The shaper's niche is that it can cut
inside keyways and splines, something that cannot be done with any other
machine. It is also handy for cuting unusual profiles as it uses the same square
bits as a lathe. You can just grind the desired profile into a lathe bit and go
at it. It is very slow, and you will have to sharpen the bit often, but it's
LOTS cheaper than making or buying a purpose-made rotary mill cutter, or having
that cutter sharpened.
As for Clausing being unsupported, check
out ebay. You can usually find a huge number of parts for them there. Same for
about any other old domestic brand you can think of. Again, though, unless the
part is EXTREMELY complicated, you can probably make it yourself with a little
creative thinking for little or nothing.
Machine tools open up a totally different
world when it comes to repairing things. You will often find yourself making a
custom billet metal replacement part for a crappy piece of plastic or badly
porous casting. It will look better, last longer, and you will have the
satisfaction of saying, "I carved that out of solid metal." An example is the
crappy plastic drawer brackets in my kitchen cabinets. They won't break again.
They are now made of billet 6061T-6!:-P Mike C.
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