Well, I've had the Hurco working for a couple months now and I have made a
few parts on it. The splash enclosure works ok on the front and sides, but
I still need to use portable guards to prevent losing coolant over the back
of the enclosure where its lower.

Anyway, I have just done a couple jobs where I had to switch from very long
tools to very short tools. I found myself cranking the table up and down
several times went. I was wondering if you had gotten around to motorizing
your knee crank, and how it worked out?

On 2013-09-25, Bob La Londe wrote:
Well, I've had the Hurco working for a couple months now and I have made a
few parts on it. The splash enclosure works ok on the front and sides, but
I still need to use portable guards to prevent losing coolant over the back
of the enclosure where its lower.

Anyway, I have just done a couple jobs where I had to switch from very long
tools to very short tools. I found myself cranking the table up and down
several times went. I was wondering if you had gotten around to motorizing
your knee crank, and how it worked out?




I motorized my knee crank and made it into one more CNC axis.

http://igor.chudov.com/projects/Brid...ntrol-to-Knee/

i

Here my powered knee:

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/camsof...olchanger.html

I only move the knee to set tool length most of the time

Karl Townsend fired this volley in
:

Here my powered knee:

I also hardly move my knee except to accommodate short or tall work.

So, I just removed the crank handle and castellated drive hub, and
installed a normal B'port-style auto-feed motor where the handle should
go. "Handle up" for up, and "handle down" for down, with a speed dial.
It almost seems like they made those motors for just that purpose! I had
to drill and tap two 1/4-20 holes in the knee casting to mount the motor.

Works a treat. The table/knee slide combo is fairly heavy on the Series
1 rigid ram machines, but the motor never strains raising it, even at
'creep' speeds.

Lloyd

On 2013-09-25, Karl Townsend wrote:
Here my powered knee:

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/camsof...olchanger.html

I only move the knee to set tool length most of the time


I may soon need a motorized knee to get in and out of trucks

On Wed, 25 Sep 2013 06:46:28 -0500, Ignoramus4074
wrote:

On 2013-09-25, Karl Townsend wrote:
Here my powered knee:

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/camsof...olchanger.html

I only move the knee to set tool length most of the time


I may soon need a motorized knee to get in and out of trucks

Bet my knees are in worse shape right now. I'm not letting my very
young picking crew use the ten foot ladder, only the seven. So, I'm
doing all the tall old monster trees. This old fart has a hell of time
with a thirty pound picking bag (when full of fruit) reaching for that
last apple fourteen feet off the ground. In general keep up with
teenagers is kicking my ass.

karl

Karl Townsend wrote:

On Wed, 25 Sep 2013 06:46:28 -0500, Ignoramus4074
wrote:

On 2013-09-25, Karl Townsend wrote:
Here my powered knee:

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/camsof...olchanger.html

I only move the knee to set tool length most of the time


I may soon need a motorized knee to get in and out of trucks

Bet my knees are in worse shape right now. I'm not letting my very
young picking crew use the ten foot ladder, only the seven. So, I'm
doing all the tall old monster trees. This old fart has a hell of time
with a thirty pound picking bag (when full of fruit) reaching for that
last apple fourteen feet off the ground. In general keep up with
teenagers is kicking my ass.

karl

10' ladder? Yuck! Get a cheap used bucket truck from a cable company and
start living large...

On Thu, 26 Sep 2013 09:16:05 -0500, "Pete C."
wrote:


Karl Townsend wrote:

On Wed, 25 Sep 2013 06:46:28 -0500, Ignoramus4074
wrote:

On 2013-09-25, Karl Townsend wrote:
Here my powered knee:

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/camsof...olchanger.html

I only move the knee to set tool length most of the time


I may soon need a motorized knee to get in and out of trucks

Bet my knees are in worse shape right now. I'm not letting my very
young picking crew use the ten foot ladder, only the seven. So, I'm
doing all the tall old monster trees. This old fart has a hell of time
with a thirty pound picking bag (when full of fruit) reaching for that
last apple fourteen feet off the ground. In general keep up with
teenagers is kicking my ass.

karl

10' ladder? Yuck! Get a cheap used bucket truck from a cable company and
start living large...

max 54" wide for equipment makes it hard. They do sell an orcahrd ape,
three wheel hydraulic bucket unit for about 20K. They are very slow up
down and unload apples to bin so not very popular.

There is also a multideck harvestor with a conveyor system only $250K.

Guess i keep the ladders.

Karl

On Thu, 26 Sep 2013 09:16:05 -0500
"Pete C." wrote:


Karl Townsend wrote:

On Wed, 25 Sep 2013 06:46:28 -0500, Ignoramus4074
wrote:

On 2013-09-25, Karl Townsend wrote:
Here my powered knee:

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/camsof...olchanger.html

I only move the knee to set tool length most of the time


I may soon need a motorized knee to get in and out of trucks

Bet my knees are in worse shape right now. I'm not letting my very
young picking crew use the ten foot ladder, only the seven. So, I'm
doing all the tall old monster trees. This old fart has a hell of time
with a thirty pound picking bag (when full of fruit) reaching for that
last apple fourteen feet off the ground. In general keep up with
teenagers is kicking my ass.

karl

10' ladder? Yuck! Get a cheap used bucket truck from a cable company and
start living large...

He needs a Brownie:

http://www.philbrownwelding.com/inde...d=1&Ite mid=2

or maybe better yet, a "Picking Platform":

http://www.philbrownwelding.com/inde...52&It emid=66

of course I think he's hoping to retire someday soon and those machines
sure won't help his savings ;-)

--
Leon Fisk
Grand Rapids MI/Zone 5b
Remove no.spam for email

"Leon Fisk" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 26 Sep 2013 09:16:05 -0500
"Pete C." wrote:


Karl Townsend wrote:

On Wed, 25 Sep 2013 06:46:28 -0500, Ignoramus4074
wrote:

On 2013-09-25, Karl Townsend wrote:
Here my powered knee:

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/camsof...olchanger.html

I only move the knee to set tool length most of the time


I may soon need a motorized knee to get in and out of trucks

Bet my knees are in worse shape right now. I'm not letting my very
young picking crew use the ten foot ladder, only the seven. So, I'm
doing all the tall old monster trees. This old fart has a hell of time
with a thirty pound picking bag (when full of fruit) reaching for that
last apple fourteen feet off the ground. In general keep up with
teenagers is kicking my ass.

karl

10' ladder? Yuck! Get a cheap used bucket truck from a cable company and
start living large...

He needs a Brownie:

http://www.philbrownwelding.com/inde...d=1&Ite mid=2

or maybe better yet, a "Picking Platform":

http://www.philbrownwelding.com/inde...52&It emid=66

of course I think he's hoping to retire someday soon and those machines
sure won't help his savings ;-)

The local date harvesters use a specialized scaffold that goes 3/4 of the
way around the tree and then drops down to close the gap. They move them
with a forklift.

On 9/26/2013 3:01 PM, Leon Fisk wrote:

He needs a Brownie:

http://www.philbrownwelding.com/inde...d=1&Ite mid=2

or maybe better yet, a "Picking Platform":

http://www.philbrownwelding.com/inde...52&It emid=66


I submit he needs one of these:

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/06/robo_picker?currentPage=all

My son worked on them as a college project.
Karl can sip cooling beverages and listen to the sweet hum of machinery.

Kevin Gallimore

"axolotl" wrote in message
...
On 9/26/2013 3:01 PM, Leon Fisk wrote:

He needs a Brownie:

http://www.philbrownwelding.com/inde...d=1&Ite mid=2

or maybe better yet, a "Picking Platform":

http://www.philbrownwelding.com/inde...52&It emid=66


I submit he needs one of these:

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/06/robo_picker?currentPage=all

My son worked on them as a college project.
Karl can sip cooling beverages and listen to the sweet hum of machinery.

Kevin Gallimore

More than 30 years ago my grandfather and a group of other small grape
farmers entered into a co-op to buy a USED automatic grape harvester. We
could strip the grapes off of 10 acres in a day easily including setup. It
took 3-4 guys to operate and do a good job. One guy drove the picker, one
drove a tractor with a bin trailer in the next row and 2 guys would monitor
the bins to keep the meat and larger sticks out. It was only suitable for
juice grapes, but it worked. 4 guys could do the work of 20.

Anyway, I suppose that there must be lots of technology out there developed
in the last 30 years. You just have to find the right farmer to buy it.

On Thu, 26 Sep 2013 09:16:05 -0500, "Pete C."
wrote:


Karl Townsend wrote:

On Wed, 25 Sep 2013 06:46:28 -0500, Ignoramus4074
wrote:

On 2013-09-25, Karl Townsend wrote:
Here my powered knee:

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/camsof...olchanger.html

I only move the knee to set tool length most of the time


I may soon need a motorized knee to get in and out of trucks

Bet my knees are in worse shape right now. I'm not letting my very
young picking crew use the ten foot ladder, only the seven. So, I'm
doing all the tall old monster trees. This old fart has a hell of time
with a thirty pound picking bag (when full of fruit) reaching for that
last apple fourteen feet off the ground. In general keep up with
teenagers is kicking my ass.

karl

10' ladder? Yuck! Get a cheap used bucket truck from a cable company and
start living large...

There's a ratty old '78 chebby ladder bucket down the street with a
$10k price tag on it. It has been there for going on two months now.
If it weren't a chebby and were $3k, it might be worth it.

--
Vidi, Vici, Veni

On Thu, 26 Sep 2013 13:24:40 -0500, Karl Townsend
wrote:

On Thu, 26 Sep 2013 09:16:05 -0500, "Pete C."
wrote:


Karl Townsend wrote:

On Wed, 25 Sep 2013 06:46:28 -0500, Ignoramus4074
wrote:

On 2013-09-25, Karl Townsend wrote:
Here my powered knee:

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/camsof...olchanger.html

I only move the knee to set tool length most of the time


I may soon need a motorized knee to get in and out of trucks

Bet my knees are in worse shape right now. I'm not letting my very
young picking crew use the ten foot ladder, only the seven. So, I'm
doing all the tall old monster trees. This old fart has a hell of time
with a thirty pound picking bag (when full of fruit) reaching for that
last apple fourteen feet off the ground. In general keep up with
teenagers is kicking my ass.

karl

10' ladder? Yuck! Get a cheap used bucket truck from a cable company and
start living large...

max 54" wide for equipment makes it hard. They do sell an orcahrd ape,
three wheel hydraulic bucket unit for about 20K. They are very slow up
down and unload apples to bin so not very popular.

There is also a multideck harvestor with a conveyor system only $250K.

Guess i keep the ladders.

Or check on the efficacy of using jetpacks... THAT would be fun.

--
Vidi, Vici, Veni

On Thu, 26 Sep 2013 14:00:18 -0700
"Bob La Londe" wrote:

"Leon Fisk" wrote in message
...

snip
or maybe better yet, a "Picking Platform":

http://www.philbrownwelding.com/inde...52&It emid=66

of course I think he's hoping to retire someday soon and those machines
sure won't help his savings ;-)

The local date harvesters use a specialized scaffold that goes 3/4 of the
way around the tree and then drops down to close the gap. They move them
with a forklift.

There was an article about it (picking platform) in our local paper
recently. See:

http://www.mlive.com/business/west-m...an_invent.html

I think there is a video there too besides some photos. Don't have
enough computer oomph to view it though...

--
Leon Fisk
Grand Rapids MI/Zone 5b
Remove no.spam for email