Manually operated shaper

[Mr Mechanical]

Hi Guys

So this week I started a new project - making a small manually operated shaper.

The shaper is mostly made from 12mm thick plate so will be pretty robust.

It will have a 3" stroke and approximately 140mm travel on the cross slide.

I plan to use this for cutting splines and key ways in small parts.

Part 1 of the build video can be found here:

[Mr Mechanical]

So over the past few weeks I been making more progress on my manual shaper. I've made the ram and the handle / level and there are now some moving parts to play with. Video will be online tonight!

[Mr Mechanical]

Hi Everyone!
So last night I got my manual shaper finished. Its moving parts work really well. I tried a piece of scrap alloy in it to see how it cuts however I didn't have the shaper bolted down so a lot of the force from the lever was lost in the movement of the shaper (coming off the table) so it deffinately needs bolted down to make it work effectively. Also, I'm waiting for a new bench grinder coming, once I have it I'll be putting a better shape of the cutting tool.

I have a full set of drawings for making this shaper so if you would like to have ago yourself please get in touch.

There will not doubt be modifications I choose to make on the shaper..... I'm already thinking about locks for the horizontal and vertical axis.

Thanks for checking out this thread! Video of the 3rd build video below. Enjoy!

[DIYer]

Thanks Mr Mechanical! We've added your Shaper to our Metalworking category,
as well as to your builder page: Mr Mechanical's Homemade Tools. Your receipt:

Shaper by Mr Mechanical

tags: shaper

[threesixesinarow]

Nice, neat job.

It looks like yours is based on S. S. Miner’s, first published in Popular Mechanics. https://books.google.com/books?id=Zd...20shop&f=false

Miner’s instructions are pretty loose, plus the way the drawings are presented is confusing and I’m not sure all of them are included in many of the pdfs you can download different places.

It’s supposed to have a kind of clapper to allow the tool bit to lift clear of the work on the return stroke, but in the demonstration at the end of the third video yours didn’t seem to include it.

In case it doesn’t, even if the shaper’s mostly going to be for internal stuff I think you’ll get a lot more use from it if you can fit a clapper, especially a more conventional design that allows both the clapper and tool to be positioned at different angles independent of each other and of the the tool slide.

Here is one home made example: Kay Fisher's Metal Shaper Column 58 Those can be locked, and fitted with different toolposts, or can be removed and replaced with solid blocks, like the one shown toward the bottom on this page: https://gtwr.de/stoss-hobelmeissel/ - he also had pictures of a home made backwards-acting clapper for cutting in reverse, but I can’t find it now.

[Mr Mechanical]

Yea, that's where I got the design from. But as you say the drawings weren't clear, hence I produced my own.

I will have a think about how I could add a clapper.

[nova_robotics]

Holy moly. A manual shaper. You must have better hand action than 13 year old me with a Sears catalog.

[Mr Mechanical]

It actually doesn't take as much effort to operate as you would imagine.

[Mr Mechanical]

So yesterday day I did a little more work to the manual shaper to reduce some of the play in the cross slide.

I removed the guide spacers and measured them against the cross slide rail. The rail measure 10.9mm while the guide spacers measured 11.9mm. So my movement was coming from the 1mm of clearance between the two parts.

I decided to machine 0.75mm off the guide spacers to create a 0.25mm clearance between the cross slide rail and the saddle / guides.

This made a massive improvement without completely locking up the saddle. Let me know what clearance you would have made?