some time ago i read an article on a metal lathe manufacturer and they talked a little about seasoning the large metal parts of the large lathes
there is probably a more suitable term than seasoning but the idea is that they would leave the material outside for months and more in the elements and exposed
then later they would check it for trueness and check for any internal stress based on the analysis the part would either get used or recycled
i wonder if this is done with woodworking equipment
Electric Comet wrote in news:mqdl3a$oq9$5 @dont-email.me:
Seasoning is the normal term. In days of yore it was common for big castings - the thinking being, that the surface of a casting cools faster than the insides, creating a stressed skin, and then when the casting is machined (and the skin cut) the stress releases in undesirable ways.
Now-a-days I think castings are usually destressed by thermal cycling them thru ovens and chillers a few times. So the only cast iron that gets seasoned now is frying pans.
Years ago, ca. 1980 I purchased a Powermatic 66 TS with pickup at the factory in McMinnville, TN, being as lived not far away in Oak Ridge area. As part of the treat got a tour through the facility and one of the areas they showed me was the seasoning piles -- mounds of raw castings for jointers, saws, planers, etc., etc., 20 and 30 ft high where they were just piled out in the yard for 6 months or so before being brought in for final milling and assembly. I was totally unprepared for the sight...
Electric Comet wrote in news:mqdta4$1fp$1 @dont-email.me:
Apparently the expansion and contraction is beneficial in working the stresses out. They used to say you couldn't properly season castings in the south because the winters weren't cold enough (there are very few foundrys in the south, altho I doubt that's the reason).
Looked like nothing so much as a scrap yard with piles of rusty cast iron...
There's a typo above; the 6 months was intended as 16 altho I forget whether they had a specific time or not...the piles were a given age of castings and I think were produced in large number at a given time and then were used up over a period of time altho the visit was so long ago now as to have forgotten most of the specifics...
Jet, Powermatic, Performax, Wilton, and I don't know who all else are now all owned by a conglomerate call JPW Industries. AFAIK nothing is manufactured in the US; some of it is assembled in La Vergne, TN (near Smyrna, SE of Nashville a little ways) from Taiwanese parts. I don't know if they've outsourced some of the castings to other foundries or not, either. I just looked on the satellite thru google maps and the old facility in McMinnville has been razed entirely it appears; down to nothing but some piles of rubble and a few walls standing.
The company that owns Jet, owns Powermatic. Some parts will interchange. FWIW you can do a lot worse than Jet and avoiding Jet for that sake is often a waste of money simply to have a different color and name on the tool.
That's definetly how it would be done, the foundary would run them off, then move on. And 16 months sounds better than 6. But knowing how everyone wants to make a buck quickly 6 could have been the number
At that time PM was still independent and ran the way they had, essentially, from the git-go where the product was the thing. The import market hadn't yet become a threat to their market; that came somewhat later when things got really tough.
right but to think they are to become final product is not all the expected for most people
yes 6 sounds short the article i read was for high tolerance machine lathes and the time frame was years and as you said they too just dumped them out into the field
they also mentioned that the seasoning process was very limiting for the business when sales shot up because new product had to be planned for far in advance
was just looking at powermatic their prices don't seem to reflect their taiwanese heritage
It was, at that time, certainly a surprise to me having no knowledge of casting and foundry operations at the time...later I became well acquainted with a fellow who was engineering manager for initially Lynchburg (VA) foundry then several others over the southeast and learned a fair amount about their operations...
That would depend on how much backlog they cast for; PM had at the time I was there probably several years' of production lined up. Of course, there weren't/aren't very many really large, terribly complicated (hence very expensive) castings in the woodworking machine of the size they were making...not like some of the commercial four- or six-shaft moulders or the like...
They're still the "Cadillac" of the industry; generally they will outweigh and have features and finish that the others don't, but partly there is the name just as Deere green paint gathers a premium in part from its reputation.
SawStop may have dethroned Powermatic. ;~) My 10" SawStop weighs in at nearly 700 lbs and has a larger trunnion and arbor diameter at the bearings. But that said Powermatic is still right at the top.
Now I don't know so much about the Pro series, I have the Industrial series. The Pro series just seemed dinky in size compared to the industrial and even my old Jet cabinet saw.
Check out the iron sitting on the front and back of the cabinet. There is plenty in between too. ;~)
The PM 2000 base saw is 530 lb; the Sawstop Pro is 540 according to each manufacturer's data (had to download manual to find it for PM) so they're quite equivalent in base machine heft.
I don't know what a current Unisaur would go at; probably somewhere between or more nearly the Pro would be my guess but I didn't go look.
The only place in Wichita that carries any "real" w-working equipment is not a PM dealer so haven't really seen the 2000 hands-on to compare fit 'n finish to the old Model 66 which was, of course, top notch. I don't recall what it weighs. Well, an online manual says 640+/- w standard wings for shipping so I'd guess in the 500 lb range for the base unit; perhaps a little under. Not _that_ far off methinks...
Well, while doing it looked up the current Unisaw -- no base unit weight found but 3HP 36" rails and standard wings is 624; again not that dissimilar but probably a little under the other two.
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