On Sun, 01 Oct 2017 20:05:25 -0500, Ignoramus13481
wrote:

On 2017-10-01, Jon Elson wrote:
Ignoramus13481 wrote:

I bought a few huge Acme Gridley RB-8 screw machines this week. They
are similar in every way to this listing:

They seem to be very useful and productive manufacturing machines
for high volume production, making things like industrual fittings,
etc.

And yet nobody buys them. WHat were they replaced with?
CNC lathes. CNC-savvy machinists know how to set these up, and they can
change over from one job to another in minutes if no tools need to be
changed, and in an hour if they do. The cam-type screw machines need very
tricky setup with a lot of trial and error until the parts come out within
tolerance.

The screw machines can generally beat even a very good CNC turning center
making just one part, day in and day out. The tool to tool time on a
screw machine can be less than a second. But, few people today know how to
set them up and maintain them.

I thought that there is a lot of such high production parts needing to be made.

i

There are. However...so many shops have gone out of business in the
past 10 yrs..that there are a lot of these machines in limbo...not
enough work to employ them all. Most of the low profit high volume
work has gone out of the US.

That may...may be changing around however. I saw 3 Acmes being sold
the other day and loaded on trucks at a dealer in Whittier, going to
be shipped to Texas.

President Trump is talking many companies into bringing their work
back home.


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