MadModder

Wow, exciting stuff re. that press incident! 

My guess would be that it was probably used as an insulator, the stuff machines fairly easily.  I poked the access holes and the counter-bores for the mounting bolts using nothing more complicated than a Forstner bit in the drill press.

The thickest slab I ever saw them press was 11" with a canvas core.  At that thickness things can get a little dicey, so they are very careful about how they do it.  I also saw them try pressing a slab about 8" thick only to have it spit out the side and bind up the press.  The press itself was a big hydraulic cylinder in a pit, we wound up changing the seals after this incident and I'm thinking the ram was 36-42" in diameter.  The 4 studs connecting the cylinder to the top-hat were 8-10" across.  The only thing that dropped the press ram and the heating platens was gravity.  When the laminate shifted it became wedge shaped, that cocked the ram in the seals - so it wouldn't drop.  They attacked that slab with hand chisels, air chisels, sawzalls, I think they even used a chainsaw on it.  That particular type of laminate was designed to laugh at most shock loads - it's used for gears that need to stand up to repeated high shock loads.  They finally got enough clearance between the slab and the studs to wrap a cable around the slab.  Then some brave soul lunatic volunteered to hook a fork lift to the cable and yank the slab out of the press. (I knew him, lunatic fits.)  From the tire marks we had to clean off the floor, it did not give up easily.  Between getting the slab out of the press, and waiting for the new seals, that press was down for the better part of a month.

vtsteam:

The base is a 470x550x30mm piece of laminated phenolic plastic, with a kraft paper core and what, if I'm remembering correctly, were known as canary covers.  On my bathroom scales that chunk weighs in at about 25 lbs.  In the mid to late 70's I was working in a plant that produced them, in the maintenance department.  Every once in a while a sheet would get rejected, this one has about a 0.010-0.015" high spot about 200mm from the LH side, I suspect that was one the reasons for it's rejection.  I'd keep my eyes open for any rejects that I thought might be usable in the future.  Since they were bound for the landfill anyway, I'd get permission from the production supervisor to take them. 

The only ones I wouldn't take were the epoxy/fiberglass sheets, those you can't cut with carbide blades.  You have to use a diamond saw on them and basically grind through them.  At that time, carbide saw blades for home use were EXPENSIVE, a diamond blade was the stuff of dreams.  We had one guy in maintenance whose sole job was to sharpen and repair the carbide saw blades.

Picture time...


This is what things look like now, doesn't look a whole lot different than this one does it?


If you answered no to that question you'd be absolutely right.  But there is one MAJOR difference, the frame is now bolted to the base and living in its' new, and permanent, home.

Next step?  Get the bed mounting brackets designed/fabricated, and get the bed mounted to the X axis bearing blocks.  If you look closely at the base below the second mounting bolt for the X axis linear rail on the far side you'll see the access hole for greasing the X axis bearing blocks. (There's a similar access hole on the near side that's hidden in the view.)  Once the bed is mounted I can get to work on the X axis lead-nut mount.  I really need to find mt ToDo list and get it updated, this should check off at least a couple more items.

Yes, probably. But I use Linux so not sure how to do it from Win. If you have one writeable USB drive, you could possibly put a Puppy Linux or EasyOS on that, reboot to it, and then use the program gparted in them to reformat the others.

If that doesn't work a disk imaging program should be able to put a new image on it. EasyDD does that in Linux. Once re-imaged you should be able to run Gparted on it and reformat to any type of disk. Probably FAT32 to keep compatible with most thumbdrives.