Shop Building & Machinery Improvements - Official Work Thread

[Brendan Barry]

Dean Copeland donated a Northfield no. 2 planer to the museum recently. We built a shed for the planer to live in outside so long timbers can be easily planed. The smaller Delta planer in the woodshop has had to be brought outside on occasion to plane long pieces of wood.











Ron Ginger arranged the donation of a new vertical mill for the shop.

[Gordon Cook]

No DRO??

[Jason M Lamontagne]

DRO was very old and nonfunctional.  Plan is to acquire a newer, more standard model.

Fear not!  At least no too much…

Jason

[Gordon Cook]

My apologies if I confused anyone. We are referring to a Digital Read Out, or an addition to the milling machine that electronically measures and reports the exact position of the table in a digital format. This enables accuracy and efficiency that is just not possible with the dials on the leadscrews of the table and knee and compensates for backlash and wear automatically.
Replacing the old one sounds like it will actually result in a better setup. From my very limited experience so far, the new ones are very useful, intuitive, easy to install, and not that expensive.
Thanks to Ron for setting this up and to Jonathan and Brendan for moving it. Not a trivial task.