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Saw a museum display that made me think about our old shop's first CNC
I was at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn last weekend, and they have this whole section on factory tools. Right there next to a giant steam engine was a 1980s CNC mill, labeled as a 'revolution in automation'. It looked just like the clunky one my old boss kept in the back corner for years (a Bridgeport Series I with a retrofitted control, if I remember right). The funny part was the info card said it could hold a tolerance of 'plus or minus five thousandths', which seemed so huge compared to what we do now. It just hit me how far the tech has come from those early days. Anyone else ever run one of those old dinosaurs, and what was the weirdest quirk you had to work around?
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viola_lopez3012d ago
My uncle had one of those in his garage shop. The whole floor would shake when it fired up, and you had to baby the feed rates or it would just stall out. That five thou tolerance sounds about right, we were always fighting backlash in the lead screws. It's wild to remember how much we trusted those old machines with parts that would be scrap today.
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the_hayden12d ago
Yeah, fighting backlash was the worst. I ended up marking my handwheel with tape for the sweet spot, which helped a bit for those tight tolerances you mentioned, @viola_lopez30.
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