What Did You Buy Today?

matthewsx -
You need to get'em recalibrated! They're WAY out of date.
(Other than that - Great buy!)
 
Cabin fever got the better of me today. I put on my space suit and ventured out to pick this little guy up. I love the oil can holder in the base with the vintage oil can, my will power was holding firm until I saw that, then it was all over. :grin:

View attachment 322317

It is an Excel 12" power hacksaw. The Covel Manufacturing Company (Atlas after 1968) also made these for Sears who sold them under the Craftsman brand until at least the 1970s.

I think this particular saw is pre-1950 because the tag says Excel Hack Saw by Covel Mfg Co. Looking at old advertisements it appears that Covel Mfg Co was dropped from the ads in 1950 instead listing them under the Excel Tool Company. I haven't been able to find much on the Excel branded saws to confirm my hypothesis, as the Craftsman ones seem to be much more common.
That is Cool!
Can't wait for the rebuild thread.
 
That is Cool!
Can't wait for the rebuild thread.

Eventually, I have so many projects on my to do list. :) It has a tilting drill press vise, so I'm going to need to make a new vise if I am to cut angles. While the wrong type it is a pretty nice vise, probably worth what I paid for the saw based on ebay prices anyway.
 
I went to horrible freight today to buy some more plastic bins and they had nothing on the shelf. So my wife suggested we go to dollar tree and got these for a $1 each. They are great.

red bins.jpg
I also loaded up the shelf I bought. Got the entire front suspension, steering box, and leaf springs on one shelf. They can definitely take the weight.

loaded shelf.jpg
 
Picked up a new toy today. We bought this because we want to bring our sheet metal work in-house to decrease costs, and be able to easily build prototype parts. The die you see in it is for the first project, just getting it set up. Up until now we have been using our hand pumped H frame shop press for this job, that's a lot of hand pressing, normally about 400 pieces per run, both ends, so 800 operations. This is going to make life much easier.

1588125149075.png

1976 Promecam hydraulic press brake. This is the same as an Amada press brake, Amada built these under license from Promecam.

4 foot, 25 ton.

Almost like new, has seen very little use I think. Has a Tektronix asset tag on it. My son said he never saw it in the shop out there when he worked there, so has most likely has been sitting in a warehouse for several (at least 20) years. Wired it into our RPC and it fired right up.

As much as I hate hydraulic operated machines, I really wanted a hydraulic press brake. They are impossible to jam. A mechanical press brake (or punch press) can be jammed at the bottom of the stroke and they are a PITA to get unstuck. As a press maintenance guy I have had to unstick a number of them over the years, and have the bent pipe wrenches to prove it.

It has a feature that I have never seen before, a micrometer shut height adjustment calibrated in 0.001'' increments that is adjustable independent of the pressure adjustment. That silver knob, center left in the picture attached to the blue box, is a micrometer thimble about 3'' diameter. Operates by a hydraulic servo valve, not exactly sure how that all works. I need to study the hydraulic drawings a bit. We got all of the original documentation and manuals with it.

It originally had some kind of ''servo'' backstop, but that had been removed at some point, but some of the controls hardware is still there (antique electronics, circa 1976). So I have been tasked with building a new servo backstop and converting the entire machine into a full on CNC press brake. The good news is that my current project is crated and ready for shipping, so I can jump on this one. Then I need to get my CNC plasma operational so we can cut the sheet metal parts to fold up with our new press brake. I'll post a build thread on both of those projects soon.
 
Lookin good! It's always nice to increase productivity while decreasing manual labor!
 
I bought a storage shelf unit from Amazon that I needed to store my stock. I had all this stock sitting on the floor and leaning against the wall previously. I like this unit because it has solid shelves which makes storing smaller pieces of stock possible without them falling through the wire mesh type.

The unit is made in Germany and seems very well made.

20200429_130156_edit1.jpg
 
That's a nice rig Jim.

Alloy, looks to be a new 9" leaf spring housing, you didn't want a back brace?
 
Back
Top