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anyway Raymond, please tell us a little more about "Elliott", from what I've seen shaper's are certainly a useful piece of kit but, in your view what makes them stand out over a Milling Machine for instance ............ as you can tell I'm no expert so, it's a genuine question.
CC
There are a lot of variables due to size of equipment. All shapers will do internal keyways but the size of those pieces will depend on the capacity of the machine. The Elliott 24", rather obviously, has a 24" stroke and the table moves about 30" which implies that a sufficiently supported piece of that size can be surfaced. The biggest I did was 16" x 26" which was way too big for my mill. A big Shaper can do a lot of things but it takes a lot of room and is quite heavy i.e. this one weighs 5,000 lbs. The fact that machine shops prefer CNC mills and the hobbyists prefer smaller Shapers means that bigger units are less much expensive than the smaller ones. The biggest acquisition competitor is often the salvage yard. They are also quite powerful so it is much better for your well being to keep out of its way when it is working.
This is a tool holder that started out as a 11" diameter disk that was 3" thick. This was the inspiration for the Shaper HackSaw. A cut off blade was used to cut out a section of the disk then the piece was carved out. The machine does remove a lot of material therefore it is not as absurd as it appears (well nearly). The Internal hole, for the bolt, was done in the mill. A typical holder holds the tool square to the ram movement while in this case the tool is angled at 45° to minimize the amount of tool grinding to have a shaving edge.
Gears are cut by combining the Shaper with a robust dividing head. The quality of the gear has everything to do with your ability to machine an accurate cutting tool. This is where having a repository, i.e. Shaper Board, for sharing of techniques and jig designs is important.
The Shaper is also very good at making dovetails and grooves in general. Whether you use your Milling Machine or your Shaper depends largely on what you have. The following piece for holding a DRO scale on my lathe was done entirely on the Shaper as an exercise.
It could be done on the Milling Machine but the point was to develop a wee bit of sharpening ability.
No - I do not know the person who slapped on the yellow paint.
Raymond
