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Always
Under Construction . . . |
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This page provides a very cursory look at just a few of our research and production assets, both
existing here at our facility and inbound from various US locations, having been bought on eBay.
 Here's a Delta 12" wood lathe I bought as a "junker" and completely rebuilt. It was stripped to bare cast iron, the bed reground and the headstock rebuilt with precision, pre-loaded bearings. The cabinet was built in our woodshop |
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Rockwell 8" Jointer |
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| This is an 8" Rockwell long bed
jointer bought new in the '70s and -- just for fun -- rebuilt in '00. When new, the machine was disassembled for inspection prior to being put into service. It was discovered that the tables had been incorrectly ground due an incredible amount of swarf being present in the dovetails at the time of assembly, prior to final grinding. When Rockwell refused to honor its own warranty, the dealer from whom we purchased made it good. We sent the machine to Dominion Bridge, here in Calgary, who at that time had a huge Snow, surface grinder capable of working a 36" x 72" surface. What we now have is a very accurate machine. Although not evident from the photo, the cutter knives are "back ground" to reduce the effective rake angle with respect to the work surface. It's not generally realized that most jointer and thickness planer cutter heads are machined so as to provide a rake angle optimized for working soft woods. When such a steep angle is used with hardwoods, "tearout" is a common effect, notable and problematic with burls. curly, crotch and "birds' eye" grains. When back ground to reduce the rake angle from 30 to 20 deg. such problems are practically eliminated and cutter life is greatly extended due the cutting edge being better self-supported. Any discussion of cutting tools would not, on this site at least, be complete without mention of the life-extending benefits of cryo-treatment. While not common knowledge amoung audio folk, such benefit has been known in the metalworking industries for some time . . . |
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Rockwell 17" Drill Press |
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| Here's a 17" Rockwell drill press
bought new in the early '70s and rebuilt in '00. Although it has seen a lot of hard use the machine has stood up well, the only problem having been a poorly designed motor-mounting bracket that allowed the motor some real latitude of motion. This repaired, the machine runs beautifully. |
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Tannewitz 16" 5HP, Direct Drive Miter Saw |
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| While this particular Tannewitz is
NOT our machine, we do have one just like it but in rather better shape. Our pix
are not available as we are still "setting up shop" after a recent move. For those inveterate "gearheads" who'd like more info on the great piece of machinery, we have available for download a 950KB catalogue in Raw PDF,format. |
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Tannewitz 16" 5HP, Direct Drive Sliding Table Miter Saw |
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| Unlike the machine above, this saw
does belong to us. It is presently Stateside awaiting consolidation with the Walker
Turner band saw shown immediately below. Purchased on eBay for a literal song and in allegedly pretty decent condition, once rebuilt this baby will let me cut the long, compound miters needed in the construction of a couple speaker cabinets now in the works. |
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Walker Turner 16", 2HP, Infinitely Variable Speed, Wood-Metal Bandsaw |
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 Presently Stateside, this is another eBay win, but not one that came along inexpensively. It will be used to resaw Koa plank into bookmatched "veneers" for use in loudspeaker cabinets. |
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Walker Turner 14", 3HP Radial Saw |
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| Taken from an original, 1948 Walker Turner catalogue, these pix give a good idea of this very versatile and extremely rigid radial saw's capabilities. | The badge above is on the motor of a saw I have nearly finished rebuilding, including a high precision regrind of the ram ways that will result in a ram-travel accuracy of better than something on the order of .002"in 24". Damn good for wood cutting equipment . . . |
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| Presently Stateside, this is another eBay win, and again, one that came for a song. Along with the other 14" WT radial saw I have overhauled, this machine will be set up for high precision cross cutting. | |
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White Model 89 direct Drive Spindle Shaper |
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| Here's a "before" shot of
a truly great old piece of machinery. Built in Paisley, Scotland on St. Patrick's
Day, 1930, this 5hp, motor-within-a-motor -- coaxial -- 3 speed direct drive spindle
shaper will be, when completed, a sight to behold. Amoung many other things, this machine will be used to create "lock miters" in the laminated, constrained layer damped, solid hardwood "veneered" panels to be used in an omnidirectional design that will see light of day in a couple of years . . . |
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Our Scratch-built Glass Beading Machine |
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| A way back in the early '70s I had
a motorcycle shop where I repaired British iron: Triumphs, BSAs, Nortons and the
like. It happened at one point that I came across a small glass beader/ sandblaster in the faculty of engineering machine shop on the U of C campus. Falling in love with the critter on the spot I determined to build one, one that suited my needs. So, I bought a little Lincoln, 200A "buzz box" stick welder and taught myself to arc weld -- on 14 ga. sheet metal. I had to build three before I got the one seen here. The first was a mess but I learned enough to do a good enough job of the second one that I was able to sell it to a company who wanted it for some sort of oilfield work. By then I pretty much had myself around the task and mine went together with relative ease. Having cut my teeth some years earlier in an auto body shop, the subsequent paint work was no great challenge. 34 years and a new paint job later this machine still works like the day I put it into service. It is immeasurably valuable in the overhaul of any piece of equipment such as a machine tool. At the lower right is shown the side panel from the floppy disc drive of a Data Precision 6000 FFT analyzer being cleaned prior to being sent out for powder coating. You can see a shot of that analyzer here. |
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Saylor Bealle 10HP, 4 Cylinder, Two-stage, V-twin Air Compressor |
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| Here you see, part way through a complete
rebuild, the compressor necessary to keep up with the 80psi compressed air requirement
of the glass beader shown above. I've developed a few "tricks" that substantially improve the performance of most reciprocating -- distinct from "rotary"compressors -- beyond the 4CFM- free-air-output- per-driving- horsepower efficiency most commonly seen. Mail me for details and if we're not home when you come over for the info package, please just slide your $US250.00 money orders under the door. Thank you :-) |
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Bridgeport Boss 5 CNC Milling Machine |
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| Shown immediately above, in an altogether
appalling hue of green, is a mid-'80s Bridgeport Boss 5 CNC milling machine that
is, I'm told, in good shape. This is yet another eBay buy that we've not yet seen
"in the flesh." Fitted with ballscrews and chrome plated ways most of these machines saw only sparse use due to the rather primitive numerical control hard- and software of the day. The upshot being that these days several companies offer complete, bolt-on upgrades for these mechanically excellent machines. Companies such as Centroid, its licensee Ajax CNC and Advanced Machinery Resource offer excellent packages featuring numerous canned cycles for milling in 2, 3 and four axes simultaneously Seen to the right is a machine fitted with the Ajax upgrade we'll be fitting to ours once it gets here. While there is no lack of production work here that this machine will be set to, the main reason for its purchase is an aid to prototyping single-sided and match mold dies for making bass, mid-bass and midrange sandwich cones. Such a task is generally far beyond the capacity of a tiny enterprise like this one but with advent of truly inexpensive CNC upgrades for $US40,000.00 machines such as the ones above machining tasks unthinkable a few years ago are now a matter of course . . . and . . . inexpensively done into the bargain. |
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Bridgeport 2J Variable Speed 2HP Manual Milling Machine |
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| Once again, an eBay buy and still Stateside.
A sweet piece that came at a great price and one I can't wait to lay hands
on . . . For more info in these great machines visit the home page of Tony Griffiths superb archival site right here or go directly to his excellent Bridgeport pages. |
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Loudspeaker Testing Facilities |
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 This is an outdoors measuring lift I built in 1985 and subsequently sold to the U of A's Acoustics and Noise Unit in Edmonton, AB; home of two quite large reverberation chambers and, on the campus proper, a small Eckel Industries anechoic room. The lift will hoist a 200lb payload, typically a loudspeaker, to 25 ft. above ground where essentially "free-field" measurement is possible. Short of a large anechoic room like this or this and costing many, many hundreds of thousands of dollars, outdoors testing is the only way to get truly accurate measurements of low frequency loudspeaker performance. At the time I built this unit it was, to the best of my knowledge, the only such dedicated lift in Canada. Replacing this piece, we have lately acquired a 35 ft. telescoping lift that will go up is the summer of 2005 . . . provided the world lasts that long . . . :-) |
  Above are shots of a small anechoic chamber I scratch built in 1982 for use in the development of midranges and tweeters. Having a useful lower limit of approximately 300Hz. it served my research needs admirably and somewhat to my surprise turns out to be useful at much lower frequencies provided one measures in the immediate near field |
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Bruel & Kjaer 2035 Signal Analyzer |
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| Here's a beautiful late model dual
channel signal analyzer that might be the most capable such analyzer Bluer &
Kjaer ever produced. It's certainly the last of the great "knob and button" boxes produced before the introduction of the now-ubiquitous PC-based Pulse software. In terms of 20Hz to 25kHz acoustics measurement, this piece lets me do everything I can think of and more. Its only slight downside being the 25kHz upper frequency limit. But, maybe I'll luck out one day and find a pair of the 100kHz input modules. Heck . . .I lucked out found this piece so one never quite knows . . . A 3.8M, 26 page PDF page of description from B&K can be downloaded here. |
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Spectral Dynamics SD 380 Signal analyzer |
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General Radio 1630AV 200 Watt Incremental Inductance Measuring Bridge |
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| This is piece that came along by dint
of plain hard work, and a lot of it. Assembled from bits and pieces purchased hither and yon over a period of a couple of years, it allows the measurement of, amoung other things, the inductance of iron core transformers and chokes over a range from 20Hz. to 20kHz., from voltage levels from millivolts to kilovolts and current levels from hundreds of microamps to several amps. Essential in the design and production of power supply components, plate load and power supply chokes and output transformers for either single-ended or push-pull applications. This is a fairly rare piece and one seldom seen in NIST-traceable calibration. When last produced by GenRad in the mid-'90s the 1630AV cost some $US38,000.00. For those with an interest we have made available here the operator's manual for the 1630AV in PDF. At 2.6 megs the file is not small but it is complete . . . |
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TANAC AW85 Semi-Automatic Coil Winder with Pitch Winding Capability |
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Quan Tech Transistor & FET Noise Analyzer |
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Tour Our |
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