ROYAL SHAPER

Has anyone got any dating information on Royal shapers ?

I have just aquired a 10" shaper serial No.R857,

It's an interesting machine with power feed to the table, in both right and left , and also up and down directions.

Richard.

Here are some pictures of it.

Richard,

That does look a useful machine.

Sorry, I have no info. but you may find it worth a look at this previous thread.

MichaelG.

That does look a useful machine

Someone posted how a shaper can do thread rolling today

I'm currently putting a scratch built hacksaw machine together but needed something for chopping up metal in the meantime, I'm fed up of chopping metal by hand so...

It only took an hour to put together this lashup, the bungee cord at the bottom of the pic provides downward force

Shapers are brill

I have found that if you don't tighten the ratchet pawl drive nut too much on my acorn it gets forced into the centre of the revolving plate when a disaster happens and this prevents anything breaking if you go too far either way when using the cross feed system

Mine is only finger tight now

Edited By Ady1 on 17/03/2015 03:57:28

I've done a similar trick for hack sawing, although I think mine was even cruder! It saved lot of sweat before I had a bandsaw.

The Royal looks interesting. Power feed both ways (sideways) on the table is usual but I don't think I have heard of an up and down power feed on the table before. Those that do have a power downfeed seem to mostly be a feed on the down slide. My big Alba has the bosses for it but it was an optional extra. I could see some interesting crashes occurring if it was feeding up and you didn't stop in time.

Quite often the cross feed screw has a plain portion at each end. This is so the nut will come off the thread if you go too far. This doesn't help if something else fouls first so it pays to always check your setups carefully.

On the Alba, that nut on the feed adjusting slide is a left hand thread, so wants a bit of watching...why won't this thing come undone....ooops.

John

# The 10" Royal is a very good shaper, especially with the front table support.

# I believe the Alba 1A, Royal and Elliot 10M are basically all the same, and from the same family of shapers, just updated. Probably similar maintanence and lube points. Plenty of 10M literature available free on the net.

#The vertical power feed for the table is rare, and to be honest, not that useful, certainly not as useful as power down for the tool slide.

# My 8" Boxford has the rare vertical table feed and after having a play when i first got it, have never used the feature since.

http://www.lathes.co.uk/royalshaper/ is a good resource!

phil

Well I guess you would know that the table feed was always truly vertical Thai.

You could then have the top-slide set over to some other known angle (and leave it there) and still cut vertically using the table feed (probably have to move the tool/clapper though) - so it might be useful on some production runs. You can do this manually too of course.

But I agree a top-slide power feed would generally be more useful although I'd have to stand and watch it (which I don't always do on normal traversing cuts) - so I may as well also 'twitch' the down feed whilst I'm doing so... I think I'd prefer a tilting table on balance - but again it's not something that I can't live without.

I like my Acorn too Ady!

Happy Shaping everyone!

IanT

I forgot to say.......... my Royal shaper also has a rotating table.

Richard.

Like this one,

Yes, that is a good feature. At least one of my shapers has it. Only one is home at the moment so I can't go and check. Of course it allows the possibility of it not being quite aligned when you thought it was, but getting it right is a bit easier than tramming a mill. At least, it is easier than tramming my mill, which is so awkward that I simply pretend that the head cannot be tilted.

You can arrange a supplementary table that changes its tilt as the shaper traverses across. This lets you make very shallow curves. I did some expansion links that way when I did not have a rotary table.

I haven't needed a power down feed enough to inspire me to make one yet...maybe one day after the steam launch is finished.

John

The problem with a power feed table is you lose the use of the front box support bar, so light cuts only

Still better to have it than not have it tho imo

So impressed was I with that lashup I've knocked up a dedicated hacksaw

It needed to be narrower to fit into the work envelope of the machine but the duty cycle of a small shaper is 24/7 and you can simply walk away and do summat else, returning every 5-10 mins

A 10 mm roundbar has a 12mm squarebar at each end. On the end on the squarebar is the gubbins for the blade which is simply me copying a proper hacksaw, everything has been welded together

I broke 2 new blades testing for the best cutting direction, 2 beautiful eclipse blades! I thought that the draw stroke would be better than the push stroke but no, the push stroke worked best, the CRITICAL bit is that the blade just lifts at the end of the push stroke (via the clapper) and lifts the blade slightly for the backstroke. You can see how the saw hangs downwards from right to left

You can watch this "lift" increase as the blade cuts through the workpiece and you screw down the topslide to work your way through a bigger job

Eclipse blades are incredibly strong and durable, you can see how the 10mm roundbar has become bowed by the amount of pressure one can handle as I tightened the blade up

Only a light weight is needed, as can be seen from the molegrips hanging from the end. The shaper is on the next speed up from "slowest" which is plenty fast enough for my liking, a wee dod of oil on the cut at the start keeps things smoother for the session

Cut accuracy is only medium, I would say that you would need a system of enclosing and gripping the blade in a vice type cover at each end to stop it flexing while it works, mounting pins alone are not sufficient

Does a great job of cutting stuff up tho

Edited By Ady1 on 21/03/2015 11:53:38