Gentlemen.
I am in a bit of a bind or more to the point my shaper is. I own a Atlas 7B shaper and there was a knock coming from the ram leaver, after a lot of hair pulling I managed to get to the part that was causing me all this grief, the block pin had worked loose from the plate it was mounted to due to the slop in the bronze (in my case brass ) thrust block. A couple of points here before I get to my question, if you own the Atlas 7B shaper and have never torn it down don’t just start hacking at it, its aint easy and there are a couple things that can go wrong and you will break parts in the process.
Another problem is that the common literature that can be found here on the net describing the machine and the exploded drawings that are supplied with it don’t tell the whole truth and are misleading; they changed spec and added parts to this little bliter through the production life and threw in diminutive wobblies just to screw your little miserable life up. If you need to rip into one ask me I now know the tricks and pitfalls.
So here is my question. The ram lever has a high chrome content in the mix for ware, so what material would be best suited for the thrust block bearing. A aluminum bearing grade bronze Alloy 954?. A Ultra-strength bronze alloy 510?. A bearing grade bronze alloy 932 which has a high lead content which would make it a little soft. Or an oiltie block. I cannot find out what was originally supplied way back in the day.
Also what clearance would you think would be needed between the ram lever and the block? I can tell you this I made a new block out of a soft brass and left a clearance of about .006 and within an hour it bound up which left me brass flakes in the oil and had gouged out a channel on the thrust stroke running parallel to the length of the block which left some slight scratches on the levers surface, so much for the chrome mix uh!.
All views are welcome. Thank you. Anthony.
