How to buy a shaper?

Don't forget slop in the shafts , gears shouldn't float , shafts shouldn't either . Push and pull Ck the table in all directions. The ram too. Engage and Ck the feed , no slip jumps or non movement. Wear on gear teeth there soft also.
 
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Now that everyone has piqued my curiosity, I went down and measured mine. It's an 8" stroke machine, and I think around 75 years old give or take.
With the ram at full stroke out, I can get 0.0015 vertical at the tool head. Just me lifting it, no bar or anything. Perhaps not so good is side to side at the same extension -- I can see almost 1-1/2 thousands each way.
I can tell there's some crowning or hollowing on the ways, it runs best in the mid-range, but if I snug the gibs any more it starts to tighten up.
For my uses it's still plenty adequate, but I also don't have tons of time on it.

Good luck if you do chase it, Glenn. It's sure nice looking, that's for certain.

-frank
 
It seems to me that as the ram gibs wear people find it wont cut true and then machine the table top flat to the ram travel.
Might want to check that the table has plenty of meat left.
 
One thing about Atlas machines, they typicaly didn't get much use, so I would be surprised if you see any signifigant wear on it. They were sold as hobby machines and not many were used in industrial settings, which is where you tend to get a lot of wear. Galling on the ram ways would be something much more common, which is caused by insuficient lubrication. I have one of these shapers, and it's a good little machine for it's size. I use it occasionaly for small jobs. I wouldn't let the zamak parts used on Atlas machines scare you off, many of them have lasted for 50 years and if treated well (not crashed or dropped) will last another 50. As stated above, having the vise on it is goodness. Those Atlas shaper vises come up on Ebay occasionaly, but they generaly sell for around 250, so take that into consideration if it doesn't have one. They also made a rotary table and index centers for them, but they tend to be fairly rare and expensive.
 
I'm with the rest of the guys, cosmetic paint jobs are a red flag. I see buying machine tools like buying used cars and a paint job was always a bad sign. It usually meant they'd rather look good than work good.

Mine suffered from bad adjustment by careless operators. Like the cutting head gib had a HUGE gouge in it that made it so it wouldn't operate its whole range. This also had warped the gib. I suspect it was somebody over tightening the gib but who knows with a machine this old. Several suggested by its paint job that it was a school machine. It also had .005 up and down play in the ram. For some unknown reason it had an extra shim under one side of the ram. When I took it out and checked it had .0015 play retracted and less than .001 extended. I'm sure it spent most of its life cutting small things in close and in the middle of the X range. The X nut needs replacing and probably the X lead screw. The insides looked good but the ram adjusting screw had obviously been jammed also. Probably someone not taking the lock off first. I straightened it and it works fine now. This also happened to to stroke adjuster. The screw itself was bent from someone cranking on it. It took a lot of finagling to fix that. Now it works through its whole range. These adjustments are crucial to proper use but are not like anything on any other machine tool I'm aware of. It takes some familiarity with this brand of shaper to know how these work.

Besides the vise the other most scavenged part off old Atlas7b's are the ratchet box. And you almost never see them on eBay. So be sure this one operates properly in both directions. I don't believe the problem with the ratchet box is the Zemak. I think it's more about adjustment of the link and forgetting to tighten it down. Then it coming loose and causing the box to crash into the X casting. Mine had obviously done that and somebody had done a pretty nice job of welding it. It's probably aluminum brazing or solder as its not JB weld.

The 7b is deceptively simple looking but there is far more moving parts, adjustments and they don't make the parts anymore. I like mine but it's an ongoing process of use and observation then remedy than I hoped for. But for $125 for a complete machine I figured it was worth the gamble. But I'd already put a ceiling of $250 on the whim of a shaper and this one still got me. I've just got a ton of hours of labor in cleaning and fixing with only a $20 motor start cap in parts. And since I need function more than esthetics, I didn't paint it. YMMV and good luck.
 
When buying a shaper, one should determine the machines worth.
For machines of 7" to 12" pay the man twice that amount.
For machines 12" to 16" pay the determined amount.
For machines of 16" and larger pay half that amount.
A little crossover there so it depends on how bad they want to sell and how much you want it.
 
I think the blue grey Baldor uses for their new grinders is a nice machine colour, so I chose a colour swath at the paint department and had them mix a quart. I now have a purple and Kubota orange shaper.
 
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