Building a Shaper experiences-

frugalguido said:
Good for you! If you have any questions I can help you.
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I'll likely need to come up with a vise for it, I'm probably just going to build one if I cannot find one easy enough.

That said, Lo-Fi, I think I'm going to be much less motivated to build one now, unless the 7B disappoints :/ Sorry you're on your own.

I'd love to talk through issues you come across with the plans though (if you need more eyes) as well as view your build video/thread!
 
That's fantastic! Pop a thread up as you go through getting it up and running!

I'll start a build thread for this, it'll be a slow burn of a project for sure.
 
ErichKeane said:
I'll likely need to come up with a vise for it, I'm probably just going to build one if I cannot find one easy enough.

That said, Lo-Fi, I think I'm going to be much less motivated to build one now, unless the 7B disappoints :/ Sorry you're on your own.

I'd love to talk through issues you come across with the plans though (if you need more eyes) as well as view your build video/thread!
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You can find those vises on eBay, but they are pricey. The Grizzly H7577 looks like it might be made to work, the mounting would need to be changed. Whatever you decide to do, it needs to be pretty low profile. The original vise is about 3 1/8" tall.
 
Congrats on the Atlas.

The vise on my Ammco is not all that great, and it is factory-o-riginal. You're probably better off making one. There are articles out there that are shaper-specific (I think Rudy Kouhoupt has one), but some of the low-profile vises made for mill tables would work as well: fixed jaw is a bar bolted to the table, moving jaw is on pins and/or guided by additional bars bolted to the table, with a simple 3/8" bolt acting as a lead screww. Lotsa options.

Also, for just starting out, remember you can lower the table to give something like 6" clearance, maybe more (not near the machine now). A toolmaker's vise could be used for a fair bit of work, assuming you have one lying around. Deal with the larger projects once you've got the shaper going and your selection of toolbits settled on (a much bigger concern than the vise, really).
 
The Atlas vise is great if you need to angular cuts because it rotates, but you sacrifice height. If it was me I would make a copy of the small EMCO mill vises, which milled from stock, is pretty low in height. You run out of height real quick on the 7B.
 
Just looked at eBay sold listings today for the 7B and vise. Least expensive vise sold for 250, free shipping, most expensive 500 free shipping. 2 7B shapers sold both with new paint, original legs, one with original vise, one with wrong vise, 1900 and 2400. Man, I'm glad I got mine when the gettin was good. I even managed to get an original index center for it for a reasonable price.
 
cjtoombs said:
Just looked at eBay sold listings today for the 7B and vise. Least expensive vise sold for 250, free shipping, most expensive 500 free shipping. 2 7B shapers sold both with new paint, original legs, one with original vise, one with wrong vise, 1900 and 2400. Man, I'm glad I got mine when the gettin was good. I even managed to get an original index center for it for a reasonable price.
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Yikes, those are crazy prices! I did $1200 for mine, but it didn't have a vise. I'm going to make a 2 part vise soon, but I'm waiting on some ground rod at the moment.
 
Lots of noise about shapers on YouTube, so that probably explains the price rise. We'll call it "The Abom effect".

I've given up trying to decipher Acto drawings, taken the general ideas and been going with my own design. Goals are to make it simple with the smallest selection of stock sizes possible; mostly bright mild steel flat and bar and minimal machining. Ditched the ball bearings in the crank arm pivots in favour of bushings and simplifying them. Crank arm slideways will be square ground tool steel stock, which saves machining it into a funny L shape and surface grinding after. Kinda looking into using linear rails for the ram slideways too: cast iron stock is expensive and there's a lot of fussy machining required. Other slideways are up for debate. We may be heading for an open source shaper design!
 
Funny I too was also thinking about using linear rails for a shaper too. Brings me to a question, " If today a machine designer today was designing a metal shaper what would he do?" That's why I have been studying the "Cincinnati all metal shaper" patents, which was at it time probably the most advanced design of a metal shaper. I really like the screw ram, seems better than the crank/gear/linkage, maybe simpler with todays motion control systems.
 
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