Motorised Adept No. 2 Shaper

[William AyerstParticipant @williamayerst55662]

Good evening all,

I was fortunate enough to get a hand-powered version of the Adept No. 2 Shaper a number of years ago, but didn’t know a good thing when I saw it and moved it on. Kicking myself, I have been on the lookout for a motorised version and I have found one and availed myself of the opportunity:

My plan is to do a nuts and bolts teardown (if only for my own edification) and re-make or repair whatever is required.

Does anyone have anecdotal advice they’d be willing to share on this little guy?

For example: When looking at the Kennedy Hexacut the general advice was to not un-bolt the motor from the base under any circumstance, and if neccesary to pre-tension both the blade fork when replacing hacksaw blades, and to use a wedge to drive the saw assembly away from the motor assembly on the base to ensure proper tension on the flat belt.

The previous owner had the motor and shaper bolted separately to a wide bench – is this a required setup? My current gut feeling is to mount the motor below, running the belt through a slot in the table surface.

I believe the tool-holder may be fabricated, so if anyone has an original with measurements I would be very grateful to know them to replace that too.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

No reason why the motor has to be on the machine-frame; and anyway the shaper itself has nowhere to accommodate it. The critical point is ensuring the two pulleys are in line and parallel. This also allows you to make a rather better tension adjuster than having to use wedges!

Obviously also ensure the swarf can not enter the motor if that has a ventilated case.

Most reference-works I have seen on using shapers is the tool tip should lie below the clapper-box fulcrum, not be in advance of it, to reduce the risk of dig-ins.

You can use a tool resembling a lathe-tool, which is what appears to be on your shaper, but it was common practice to use ones swan-necked to bring the tip back under the pivot. I do use one on my Drummond manual shaper.  Those though were of forged carbon-steel.

There is an old design based around a bicycle crank that holds small tool tips in a miniature version of what you see in in your photo, on the end of an arm, to do the same thing.  This also allows the tool to be rotated to cut down the side of the work, though that can’t be an easy operation without auto down-feed.

[Pete.Participant @pete-2]

The tool holder looks the same as the one I had, only with a ring of metal behind the cutting tool to allow smaller bits of hss to be held?

Or if the hole had been enlarged previously for larger hss and now needs that ring to hold more standard size bits?

[PeteParticipant @pete41194]

I can’t give you anything very specific about your new Adept William. If you don’t already know about this? https://www.lathes.co.uk/adeptshaper/index.html It seems like the factory powered no. 2 shapers are quite rare, so that was a lucky find.

But fwiw, I can give you a few general tips I’ve learned with my own little shaper. Once you do get it back together, bolted down and operational, the first check I’d do is attach a magnetic base to the ram and the indicator tip as close to the rear of the table as you can get it. Then hand cycle the ram through it’s stroke and over the tables full depth. Shapers produce accurate parts due to how well aligned and unworn the ram way surfaces are, and it’s parallelism to the tables top surface. Then move the ram to the other side of the table and check it again. Those two checks will tell you a lot about what further adjustments or corrections might be needed.

Unless your very lucky, I’d expect to see some wear and misalignment since yours is at least 60 or more years old. My shaper is a bit more conventional layout with a ratchet and driven table, but either design works much the same. And mine has a factory oil pump South Bend added to the second generation of there shaper, so adequate gear and ram lubrication was considered pretty important. One of the most critical adjustments are the gibs, smooth with no trace of slack, but still without any tight spots. As a last resort, and maybe only for a very minor amount of misalignment, most shapers can be used to take a very minimal clean up cut across it’s own table to re-establish parallelism. Better would be to do it properly and scrape it back into alignment and leave the table alone unless it’s also worn or has some surface damage.

Shapers also exert a lot of cutting tool pressure that helps to flex the front of the table and work piece down. For that reason most shapers have an additional and adjustable support foot towards the front of the table. Adding something like that to the front of your bench and below the table would definitely be something I’d want.

If it’s possible and you have enough room. I’d also consider adding a 3-4 step pulley for both the motor and drive pulley. As a guide, my South Bend has 4 available ram stroke settings. 42, 75, 120 & 195 per minute. Although I’ve never used and see no real need for the fastest one, but I also don’t machine much aluminum. A motorized shaper has quite a bit of reciprocating weight, my shaper and factory stand combined weight is around 400 lbs / 180 kilos. Even with that, I had to solidly bolt my stand down to keep it from moving at the faster ram speeds.

I’m unsure about how those Adept shapers are designed, most other crank driven shapers also have a correct and incorrect motor rotational direction. When it’s correct, the ram should move backwards during the non cutting stroke faster than moving forward. And there’s also a bit more leverage during the cutting stroke.

Shapers are pretty deceptive and can be dangerous if you do something without thinking about it well enough.They can also be very easy to permanently damage. I never set mine up without doing a full hand powered cycle of the ram first to double check my clearances. Keeping the drive belt slightly loose isn’t a bad idea either. And unless I need to feed the slide down after each stroke when vertical shaping, I never get my hands or any other body part anywhere inside the table perimeter. With the deep gear reduction they have, removing fingers or even a hand would be easy.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Correct / incorrrect rotation…

Errr, no, not quite.

The quick-return is normally by driving the ram through a sort of Scotch crank having one end of the arm on a fixed pivot and the other end, driving the ram itself.

This example appears to have the stroke adjustment the normal quick-return crank also gives; but otherwise seems to use a simple crank drive, giving equal speeds cutting and returning. It would impart the same forces in both directions, too.

If so, it should not matter which way the motor revolves. It would make no difference to the crank action.

The quick-return mechanism was only used for reducing the production time slightly in factories. It has no particular engineering advantage otherwise.

.

Speeds…

Nearly 200 strokes/min (about 3 per second) seems far too fast for a small shaper like this. Remember these Adepts, Drummonds, etc., were designed primarily for manual, not motor drive; so I’d think 100 strokes/minute a safe maximum. Used manually, I think most of us would struggle to maintain even 60s/m for long.

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

They were originally designed to be fitted on the edge of a bench, hence the position of the mounting lugs. That went along with the common set up of the time of a motor and countershaft on the wall behind. However the best arrangement is to create a frame (angle iron) containing the motor on which the shaper sits to make it a self contained unit.
A useful rule of thumb in use is to keep the area of each cut (ie feed x depth) to 1mm2. While it is easy to go higher this I find the smoothest as the start of each cut is a sudden load unlike a lathe continuous cut.

For anyone getting interested by this thread Exeter DMES may still have one for sale, motorised on frame.

[John HinkleyParticipant @johnhinkley26699]

I used to own a similar Perfecto shaper, now alas in another’s hands, which was mounted on a not insubstantial angle iron bench fabricated, I believe, by the previous owner.  Having recently successfully retrieved my album photos from the “old” forum site, I am able to show it below in all its new-to-me glory:

This was just after I purchased it back in 2016-ish.  It may give you some ideas as to how the shaper could be mounted and the “under drive” belt arrangement was achieved.  I later changed the motor to a ⅓HP 3-phase motor with cheap VFD to enable greater speed control without the need to change the belt position.  Thus:

John

 

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

John –

Neat arrangement and nicely-restored machine!

 

Bazyle –

Re the impact at the start of the stroke.

I file a small chamfer along the entry edge to reduce the hammering slightly – that on a fully manual Drummond shaper.

[William AyerstParticipant @williamayerst55662]

Thank you all very much for your kind comments and advice, certainly lots to think about.

I have a solid wooden tool stand that I used for a pillar drill a lifetime ago that this would fit well on, though it will need the belt running down below the surface as it’s only around 18″ square. Re-using this stand and making the tool more compact is definitely a plus for me.

If I were to mount it on a ‘sled’ then think it only needs an overall area of about 24″ x 10″. Fairly easy with some PSE timber screwed and glued and planed, with threaded inserts into the wood + epoxy, maybe? I much prefer the idea of angle iron for the sake of stability, but I can’t visualise what it would look like?

I make the pulley-to-pulley distance about 11.25″, the four mounting holes for the shaper are in a rectangle of 7.5″ x 5.5″ and the four mounting holes for the motor are in a rectangle 3.75″ x 5″

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Rotation. You want the rotation to make the crank connecting rod push down on the slide during the cutting stroke otherwise it is pushing up against the gib strip which is not a good idea.

[William AyerstParticipant @williamayerst55662]

I’ve found a spare piece of 3/4″ plywood which can take both the shaper and the motor – not a long term solution but one to get me up and running to test the machine with, for sure.

Pictures and results soon, thank you!

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Bit late I’m afraid but here are a couple of pictures of a self contained mounting of the one Exeter DMES has. It is for sale by the way.

[Bazyle]

On Bazyle Said:

Bit late I’m afraid but here are a couple of pictures of a self contained mounting of the one Exeter DMES has. It is for sale by the way.

that’s very helpful thank you very much. Unfortunately Exeter is a bit of a way for me otherwise I would bite your arm off. An interesting countershaft arrangement is that to bring the RPM of a faster motor down or to reduce the standard motor speed to get a more reasonable stroke?

[not done it yetParticipant @notdoneityet]

I would like a motorised mod for a Drummond.  Not found one yet, but the Drummond is now getting too hard to do much manual shaping!

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

William – yes the final pulley is similar to a lathe size it would be like a lathe without back gear which is a bit lively. At least further 2:1 desirable.
NDIY you had better not have Dine It Yet – sacrilege to a Drummond. The screw in handle does lend itself to a longer one.
Just now thinking an Adept No 1 would be ever so cute with a motorised copy of its big brother the No 2 above.

[William AyerstParticipant @williamayerst55662]

I have finished the micro tapping spindle for my Universal Pillar tool, and so I’m juggling a restoration of the Adept amongst other smaller jobs.

 

While cleaning, I noticed that all of the parts which make it motorised are coloured a deep Prussian blue, while the main body of the shaper (i.e. all the things which would be present on a non-motorised version) are grey, and there are a few splashes of a pea green (which may be undercoat?) on the ram.

Was this a painting style adopted by Adept, or have I got the parts from two different machines?

Taking apart the tool holder on the clapper it is definitely not original – rather than the wide base that fits into the circular recess of the clapper inside, it has a very thin-headed bolt – and the tool holder slot is circular rather than square, with no taper. An easy enough piece to make, but curious. I wonder if the original broke?

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Mine is a consistent blue throughout. Maybe they sold an upgrade kit.
The previous owner might have made a special holder because they had or wanted to use boring bars, such as the carbide tipped sets you can get. Also they might have seen it as a solution to the tools moving sideways which can happen for various reasons. Alternatively rather than break it  as such they might have stripped the threads. On mine the T-bolts holding the main table must have been done up by a gorilla with a six foot extension bar they are so distorted so I’m lucky he did not get at nay other bolts.

[Howard LewisParticipant @howardlewis46836]

On my hand powered Adept No 2, I found that the T slots in the Angle Bracket holding the work and machine vice had not been finish machined.

The Angle Bracket was removed and the T slots that could be accessed, just cleaned up. (The one closest to the mounting face had to remain untouched.

The home made machine vice was located to the Angle Bracket by stepped dowels.

Howard

[William AyerstParticipant @williamayerst55662]

Looks like it’s all in fairly good nick although very dirty. I’ve degreased, paint-stripped and the first layer of undercoat has gone on. I’ve just realised though, I’m not sure if I should be polishing the bare metal surfaces before or after I’ve done the painting – things like bosses with machined faces, the clapper, etc.  – any tips?

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Polishing? It’s a machine tool not the world cup trophy.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

A quick request, William …

Whilst you have the machine dismantled; could you kindly take a few photographs  of the ‘clapper’ ?

To my great embarrassment, it seems increasingly likely that the one for mine [a fully manual machine] was ‘lost’ when I moved house three years ago.

My thanks for any images you can share.

MichaelG.

[Michael Gilligan]

I’m quite happy to say I have the machine all back together and it’s made its first chips under my ownership. One small annoyance that I’ve found is that the automatic feed seems to only work in one direction.

When setting it to a given direction, you have to give it a bit of a helping hand to make up the backlash and then once it’s engaged then all is well feeding left-to-right, but if you try to feed right-to-left then it just waggles the lead-screw back and forth without ratcheting consistently. Occasionally I can get a couple of clicks out of it, but that’s it – even with the backlash taken up.

Is there something obvious that I’m missing? It’s quite an important feature of the machine and for the life if me I just cannot work it out.

On Michael Gilligan Said:

A quick request, William …

Whilst you have the machine dismantled; could you kindly take a few photographs  of the ‘clapper’ ?

To my great embarrassment, it seems increasingly likely that the one for mine [a fully manual machine] was ‘lost’ when I moved house three years ago.

My thanks for any images you can share.

MichaelG.

 

No problems, would it be helpful to take any measurements for you? Just the clapper itself, or the whole topslide?

 

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

That’s very kind of you, William

So far as I am aware, I have the whole machine except for the clapper-box

Photographs of that unit, with a few dimensions, would be very welcome.

MichaelG.

[Michael Gilligan]

dd

On Michael Gilligan Said:

That’s very kind of you, William

So far as I am aware, I have the whole machine except for the clapper-box

Photographs of that unit, with a few dimensions, would be very welcome.

MichaelG.

Overall pics here: https://imgur.com/a/yH6aXFm  – the hinged clapper is 1.25″ x 2’25”

I still can’t quite puzzle out the ratcheting problem – a few times I’ve tried to change direction I’ve noticed the ratchet pawl is quite stiffly engaged, so maybe there’s some binding in the mechanism? I can’t quite put my finger on it – doesn’t help that the leadscrew thread is left-handed and the ratchet action is the opposite rotation of the travel action. My brain is discombobulated!

Another puzzlement is the tool-holder – pictures of the tool holder removed from the Shaper are non-existent, so while I’m quite sure mine is a shop-made replacement, I don’t know what the original should look like!

The stepped hole in the clapper is 3/4″ for 3/16″ deep, then a through hole at 1/2″. The rear counterbore is 1″ dia for 1/8″ deep. Clearly, with counterbores on both sides, a solid tool-holder isn’t possible. I can’t quite visualise what it SHOULD look like, though. Any ideas?

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Excellent … Thank You

MichaelG.

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