A chip off the old block

[KeithB]

Cleaning up shop, going through years of accumulated junk, finding all sorts of things.

When I first became I machinist I ran a machine called a planer, specifically a Gray double column four head machine with a 72" wide table and a twenty foot long stroke. We would take rough castings for the mainframes of Bucyrus-Erie cranes and shovels and plane flat surfaces where necessary. The first part I ran weighed about 15 tons, and when we rough cut using all four heads we would cut off several hundred pounds of chips per hour.

Here are photos of one of the chips that I cut off and managed to take home. It was a cut taken in medium alloy medium carbon steel using a large (fist size) Apex HSS tool cutting 1" deep with a 1/4" feedrate per stroke. Cutting velocity was probably 25 or so feet/min.

Remember, the machine was cutting FOUR of these at a time...

 

[smokeywolf]

Sounds a little like 4 shapers put together and on steroids.

 

[Ian]

We've had a few of those B-E machines in our shop, including a well drilling rig. BIG chunks of iron.

 

[KeithB]

We machined the mainframes and crawler frames for 61, 71, and 88-B machines along with many other parts. The planer I ran was so big they were able to put a 36" swing 144" between centers lathe on the table complete and recut the V ways to true it up. I was too junior to do that but I watched in fascination as the millwrights and machine operator worked on it.

When one of those chips popped off and hit you you knew it! One guy had one pop off and land around his neck, by the time he got a couple of rags to grab it and pull it off his hands and neck were badly burned. The scar tissue around his neck after it healed was such that with a bolt through his neck he would look like Frankenstien's creation. The chips came off blue-hot, easily in the 700+F range.

B-E was made famous because it's machines were the ones primarily used to dig the Panama Canal.

 

[freebullet]

That is crazy. With chunks like that it would be easy to get tore up.

Makes me glad our machinery is tiny in comparison. My biggest truck /cleaning machine combo is only 7 ton and it services about a 50 mile radius around town.

 

[300BLK]

I worked in a shop 35+ years back that had a planer mill with similar sized table(possibly 8' wide), but I recall 2 heads on that one. They were making printing presses and folders, and the big side frames were machined on that particular machine. That one ran as a planer with single point tools, and as a mill with big rotary cutters.

 

[KeithB]

I also used to run a two head Gray open sided planer and a Niles 4 head double column planer that had a much smaller table and stroke length. There was a planer retrofitted with milling heads in the shop also but I never had the chance to run it. It was in the "Milling Machines" category; I was certified for Planing Machines, Radial Arm (large) Drilling Machines, and Horizontal Boring Machines. (It had a lot to do with necessary skill level, paygrades, etc.)

Rotary type (milling) machines are far more efficient than single point planing/shaping machines, but there are still some things that a planer/shaper can do with simple tooling that can't be done or can only be done with very expensive tooling on a milling machine.

 

[Pistolero]

Wow! That is impressive. At first glance, I thought it was a weld bead that cracked off of some part.

Those are such huge machines that it is hard to even imagine that sort of stuff. Must have taken huge HP
to run them. And stand back, don't get hit by half pound chunks of flying hot steel!

Amazing stuff. Too bad you don't have some movies of that, I find this stuff fascinating.

Thanks for sharing.
I think that all the chips I have created with my new lathe MIGHT add up to the weight of that one
chip. But then again, I've only had it for half a year, might not make it.

Bil