Interesting 1940's CNC

[Bernd]

Take a look at this pre-historic CNC.

BC: Before CNC at NACA/NASA.

Thanks Bob.

Bernd

[Lew_Merrick_PE]

Take a look at this pre-historic CNC.

BC: Before CNC at NACA/NASA.

Hell's bells.  One of my main jobs from 1968-1975 was cutting and filing (2D and 3D) tracer templates for hydraulic tracer mills.  I learned hydraulics rebuilding tracer valves!  The oldest one I worked on had a 1934 date cast into it.

EIA RS-427 is the command structure for G-code programming.  It came out of the chaos of our (American) response to Sputnik.  I built a DNC milling machine in 1968 from the bones of a Gorton 9J vertical milling machine using a 4-bit microcomputer (RTL discrete component processor) and (3/4 HP) stepper motors!  I believe (but cannot prove one way or the other) that it was the first DNC milling machine west of the Mississippi not in a government lab or prime contractor's facility.

[BobWarfield]

A lot of parts got made on tracer mills and tracer lathes, not to mention screw machines, which are another mechanical CNC "cousin".

I just had never seen a 4th axis rig cutting compound curves like those impellers and thought those were cool pix.

There was a period there when the machinist was held in very high respect.  You can tell from the photographs.  I still hold them in high respect, but you don't see that so often anymore.  It's a shame because it takes tremendous smarts to do it really well.

Cheers,

BW