"Harold and Susan Vordos" wrote in message
...

"PrecisionMachinisT" wrote in message
...
snip-----

There was also a couple of Wilson's converted planers there that were
setup
with ~ 15 ft long tilt tables.....along with the std 3d tracer valve,
the
pattern and table would both tilt upon -x- axis travel, via a separate
template attached to the bed....

Interesting! Converting old planers must have been fairly common. Not
long after I started my shop ('67) I landed the first serious contract
that
got me on my feet, making templates for components for the Boeing 747
superstructure. The job had been handed down through several shops
before it got to me, but prints came from LTV. At any rate, the shop for
which I made the templates (McGee & Hogan, now defunct) used a planer that
had been converted to tracer application by adding two milling heads to
it.
I never saw it in operation, but with it they produced four different
components, each of which required four templates, one for each face of
the
required parts.


The tilt tables used a "180 valve"--these were typically used for tool
height control when operating in 2d mode...push up on the probe and the head
rises.....let loose of it and the head travels slowly downward until it hits
something--kind of a "floating" sort of arrangement, and really handy if you
were using preset tool lengths....what you would do is put a small turret
with adjusting screws underneath the probe...similar to the end stops on
your typical turret lathe....

But in the case of this particular machine, an additional 180 valve was
attached to the tilt tables and another pattern was afffixed to the machine
bed--I recall some sort of linkage or maybe it was the other way around,
with the probe affixed to the bed--its been quite some time now and for the
life of me I can't remember all of the details anymore...

--

SVL