Beaver mill

[OuBallieParticipant @ouballie]

Out in the open to rust away

[OuBallieParticipant @ouballie]

Saw this whilst out enjoying the weather on Sunday.

Photos say it all. Album added.

Is this what manufacturing has come to in this country and the West in general?

Geoff – makes one weep seeing this.

[GarryCParticipant @garryc]

Hi Geoff

I'm afraid the answer is yes to that, very very sad indeed. I dread to think what many of the skilled generation who used such equipment and are still at work are doing for employment today, they were completely betrayed by this country – to put it politely.

Many many many of todays jobs require no skill or knowledge about anything at all – my opinion anyway. Having a skill when I grew up was respected and valued and contributed to self respect – on many different levels.

Just my two pennies worth..

Cheers.

Allan.

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

To be honest here and this mill is a very close model to my Beaver CNC mill, in fact this one was a step up from mine being on servo's and has a tool changer they are old hat now.

It's not a question of " Is this what manufacturing has come to in this country" is more a question of things have moved on and this thing is a total dinosaur. No one who is into manufacturing with CNC could make one of these things pay today.

Not powerful enough for modern carbide tooling, too slow in spindle speeds and feeds and no enclosure to allow flood cooling.

Geoff, tiptoe past it – let it rust in piece.

[S.D.L.Participant @s-d-l]

Best hope is it was replaced with a more up to date and capable machine.

There is still lots of machining in this country, but to compete its got to be good metal removal rates unless used on repair work.

Steve

[GarryCParticipant @garryc]

I won't disagree with whats being posted so far other than to make two points.

1. In comparison to the levels of manufacturing that we used to do in this country we are barely on the same scale now. That has enormous ramifications still for many families today, my own included.

2. Yes things have moved on, nobody can stop progress of course – but we could have moved on and treated the workforce that helped to build this country with much more respect and dignity. We treat 'newcomers' to this country now far better than we have treated our own… and thats an understatement – but a fact that cannot be disputed.

I dont see many newcomers asking for the right to work being charged down by police swinging batons and fists..

I used to be proud to be british – not any more and not for a long time.

Cheers.

Allan.

Edited By Allan. on 18/03/2014 14:25:45

[Tony Pratt 1Participant @tonypratt1]

Posted by Allan. on 18/03/2014 14:17:15:

I used to be proud to be british – not any more and not for a long time.

Cheers.

Allan.

Edited By Allan. on 18/03/2014 14:25:45

Very sad indeed that you are not proud of your own country but their are many of us who are. Don't let the moronic politicians[of all parties] grind you down!

Tony

[Ex contributorParticipant @mgnbuk]

Beaver NC5 IIRC. Late '70s – early '80s most likely. I retrofitted 4 or 5 at my last employment & don't recal them being anything special – no better or worse than the Bridgeport Interacts, Matchmakers (Shizuoka carcass) Acton PowerMills (Anayak carcass) or other similar machines that were popular back then.

Most likely scenarios are that it either wore mechanically to the point that it would no longer reliably produce the desired standard of work, or (more likely) that an electronic fault occurred that would cost more to fix than the machine was worth. In the mid-'80s I retrofitted new Heidenhain controls onto all of the above named turret mills. By the mid-'90s it was no longer cost effective to do so, as the cost of new vertical machining centres had dropped substantially & the cost of a retrofit had risen substantially to the point that the retrofit was not viable. If you were to fully rebuild and retrofit that machine, it would cost more than a new vertical machining centre & the "as new" Beaver would still be short on capacity and capability compred to a new machine.

It had it's day & is now "retired" – nothing to get upset about.

Nigel B.

[GarryCParticipant @garryc]

Hi Tony

Don't let the moronic politicians[of all parties] grind you down!

Completely agree with the sentiment, but very much easier said than done when you have seen the results the politicians have caused up close. The country would have been better keeping the factories and manufacturing industry, developing it sensibly with some intelligence and getting rid of the politicians – skillless useless parasites in my view the lot of them and I won't mention the bankers less I'll likely get banned from here with the language needed… There are many scars here in the South Wales Valleys that still run very deep and will for a long time yet to come I think..

Allan.

[John JepsonParticipant @johnjepson53395]

I have to disagree with John Stevenson..the engineering company around the corner from my workshop has one of these..it runs every day making money..they use carbide tools no problem and sits near a Hurco VMX 64 machine centre!..This would have had the Heidenhain TNC151 controller..still very usable in a job shop..the spindle motor is a Bull 7.5HP DC motor and the servos are siemens 8nm DC motors so quite powerful.

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

I reckon Britain is a country plagued by incredibly bad management and a quick buck mentality

Companies like Cadbury get flogged off, companies like Mini and Land Rover get taken over by foreign managers who CAN make money. Companies like Nissan come here and use the UK workforce successfully.

The latest casualty was Manganese Bronze who make the totally unique Black Cab, (they couldn't even get that one right!)

We get rid of these management muppets if there's a war, but otherwise we're stuck with them

Now they've trashed our huge private sector industries they've been forced to move on to run things like our Education service and the Health service which are going in one direction, the only direction these people have even known, doon the pan

 

Edinburgh has just "bought a tram", which no-one except the ruling class morons wanted. A billion quid!

The entire city (only 350,000 people) could have had free buses for 30 years with that money

Throw your car away and use the bus for nowt… or have a tram no-one needs…

 

edit: And most of that money went to foreign/outside companies, the local economy received almost zero benefit and had to endure 7 years of chaos which wrecked the city centre

Edited By Ady1 on 17/04/2014 10:30:48

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

Meanwhile countries with smart managers like Germany romp forwards into the future

[john kennedy 1Participant @johnkennedy1]

Stand for election and I'll vote for you.

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

That West Coast main line contract was so rigged the ruling class morons couldn't even put their big toe into a courtroom when a judicial review was announced

(A judicial review is the nearest thing to proper open public scrutiny the government ever has to deal with)

West coast main line deal scrapped

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

Stand for election and I'll vote for you

lol, they'd put a bullet in me

My cornerstone policy would be to demolish the entire private school system, do a dissolution of the monasteries job on them and get rid of the tribalism in the system, and have all our kids on a level playing field at comprehensives

No-one who has ever been to a private school can ever be a government minister or an MP

Then we can let the best flow out of the system to run our country, not the richest

——–

No-one who has ever been to a private school can ever be a government minister or an MP

The day after this law comes into effect I would have to resign btw

Edited By Ady1 on 17/04/2014 11:04:10

[Roger Williams 2Participant @rogerwilliams2]

Allan, my sentiments indeed sir !. You forgot to mention the other type of parasite that seem to b***ering things up generally for the nation, Health and Safety . Dont get me going. To the OP, not a very dignified end for a machine is it.

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

Britain, like India, has a caste system, social stratification, which is why both countries will always be in the slow lane of the global economy

These antiquated systems have been demolished in countries like Germany and China, countries who inhabit the fast lane

Watch China forge ahead over the coming decades, while India treads water

[StovepipeParticipant @stovepipe]

Posted by John Stevenson on 18/03/2014 13:49:06:

To be honest here and this mill is a very close model to my Beaver CNC mill, in fact this one was a step up from mine being on servo's and has a tool changer they are old hat now.

It's not a question of " Is this what manufacturing has come to in this country" is more a question of things have moved on and this thing is a total dinosaur. No one who is into manufacturing with CNC could make one of these things pay today.

Not powerful enough for modern carbide tooling, too slow in spindle speeds and feeds and no enclosure to allow flood cooling.

Geoff, tiptoe past it – let it rust in piece.

Quite right, John. Better move on before the dinosaurs posting on here decide they want to reactivate steam engines and horse buses.

Dwnnis

[Tony Pratt 1Participant @tonypratt1]

Posted by Ady1 on 17/04/2014 12:32:28:

Britain, like India, has a caste system, social stratification, which is why both countries will always be in the slow lane of the global economy

These antiquated systems have been demolished in countries like Germany and China, countries who inhabit the fast lane

Watch China forge ahead over the coming decades, while India treads water

Oh I wish I lived in China, I would so like to inhabit the 'fast' lane. LOL

Tony

[NJHParticipant @njh]

Great idea

Let's forget all about Health and Safety and go and live in a China like THIS

– or indeed return to the Victorian era when Britain really was Great and benevolent mill owners and their like provided full employment for all ages without the nuisance of extensive, meddling, interference from the do-gooders .

Just think too of all the dough we could save without the NHS .

N

[nigel jones 5Participant @nigeljones5]

they put a mega million pound tram system in a part of outer manchester I visit. Twice the cost of the bus, only one station every quarter of a mile and no one ever uses it – who could have worked that one out! The entire ruling class are soooo out of touch with reality.

[John JepsonParticipant @johnjepson53395]

Here is a similar machine but a newer version with AC servos on Fanuc OM.

**LINK**

[mike mcdermidParticipant @mikemcdermid41977]

We just ordered another cnc machine the rep pointed out they can deliver 20 machines a month and currently are at a backlog of 42 machines a month , at the mach show alone they sold 4.4 million quids worth in 3 days, machines some of which cost 400k each in terms of one manufacturer alone not bad and thats not a company like Haas which sells commodity cnc

Manufacturing has just changed its not dead

[Terence Yates 1Participant @terenceyates1]

Many years a ago,

I was at my Grandparents council house when my Grandfather called me to one side. Now he was a disabled soldier of the Great War who had lost an eye and suffered a little gas poisoning , I have never understood what was Great about it, anyhow he was a man of few words who had spent his working life laboring in Birmingham's Fish Market. Now he said to me (and this was in the 1950 's) Beware the Yellow Peril. ( his exact words ) China would become the World's number One, making and selling it all to us.

It may have taken Sixty+ years but he was correct.

Terry.

[Bill PudneyParticipant @billpudney37759]

One of the many reasons that I emigrated was because in the last couple of years I was in the UK, I had to visit a lot of companies that were downsizing. Basically it was so depressing to visit another empty factory. This was in the late 70s.

Out here our "risk averse" management make such a song and dance about buying new equipment. At one stage, after many months of teeth sucking they finally agreed to stump up the AU$750,000 for a new DMG 5 axis mill. We were told that there would be a slight delay, just a couple of weeks, because "our" machine would be shipped with the 23 (that's twenty three 5 axis mills) that were destined for one factory, in Asia.

Do BSA Machine Tools actually make anything, or are they imported from elsewhere??

cheers

Bill

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