# Shaper vs mill



## dlane

Is a shaper able to do things a mill can’t ?.


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## T. J.

The one that first comes to mind is making an internal keyway, as in the bore of a pulley or gear, etc.


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## C-Bag

And internal splines and shapes along with gears and dovetails. It can leave a really smooth accurate finish too. Close as you can get to a ground finish without a surface grinder. Not to mention it uses lathe type bits to do all of this. But it has a pretty steep learning curve in operation, and proper profiling of tool bits.


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## Dranreb

A shaper is able to achieve most things a mill can and you still have some money left over...


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## T Bredehoft

On the other hand, I'd hate to have to bore a hole with a shaper.  There are times  I do wish I had one, though.


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## C-Bag

As an unrepentant tool a holic, I think it's not a question of either or. I have both and only sometimes wish bigger and better of both.


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## Doubleeboy

with a shear tool a shaper can surface crappy, gummy steel and get a beautiful finish, one not likely obtainable using an end mill in a mill.  They also excel at keyways, dovetails, slots.  If the cross feed is set course enough they can do great looking checkering, but most small shapers have too fine a feed to do it well.


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## Dranreb

Shapers have personality, they are the nearest thing to a plug in steam engine you can own..

An often overlooked bonus is that when you're working in your man cave late at night, the slow mellifluous rhythm gently reverberating through the fabric of your home will lull your nearest and dearest to sleep, not many machines can manage that


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## Ironside

New guy here. First post, I've been reading on this forum for a while now.  Caught this thread about shapers and thought I'd share. I used to have a really tiny one, but sold it a couple of years ago when someone offered me "insane" money for it. I think it was a model maker's shaper. It didn't have any identification on it anywhere. I used it to cut a few keyways and played around with it a bit. Kinda wish I had kept it sometimes.


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## FOMOGO

Kinda like Godzilla & King Kong. You really need both to make a decent movie/shop. Mike


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## DHarris

Oh man, Ironside - - They would have had to pry that from my cold dead hands - - that is just too cool!!


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## Ulma Doctor

a shaper will compliment all of your other machine tools.
a large shaper or planer can hogg off large chunks of material effortlessly.
a milling machine would struggle to keep up to complete the same work.
there are drawbacks- big, heavy, labor intensive, and set ups can be challenging to achieve dimensionally accurate parts
3 phase power is needed for most industrial sized units.
with VFD'd or RPC's, the homeowner can easily power them.

if i had more room, i'd make that run to redding and snatch that beast


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## NortonDommi

DHarris said:


> Oh man, Ironside - - They would have had to pry that from my cold dead hands - - that is just too cool!!


Second that! I have an Alba 1-A, used it today for a surfacing job that would have been a crappy ***** on the mill.  If only I had more room I'd have a bigger one too.


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## Mystery1

And you can cut gears with a real involute curve:


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## C-Bag

GinStC said:


> And you can cut gears with a real involute curve:



Cool vid! Thanks for posting.

But can somebody explain the rig? I get the index block, and the index gear, but the wire or whatever it is rigged across it I've never seen before. Admittedly I've only seen gear cutting on the mill, vertical and horizontal. Is the wire wrapped around the index arbor to rotate in place as the carriage moves? So this is so the cutter just has to be cut at a straight angle and ends up with the involuted cut by traversing through? Is this how this did it back in the day or did he come up with this?


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## Mystery1

The gear blank rotates as the carriage moves sideways. The wire is wrapped around a pattern that is same diameter (or pitch circle, not sure which). The setup was described in Model Engineer in Sep 1950. The method predates that though, apparently used in Maag and Lees-Bradners gear grinding machines. 
https://case.edu/ech/articles/l/lees-bradner-co/


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## NortonDommi

C-Bag said:


> Cool vid! Thanks for posting.
> 
> But can somebody explain the rig? I get the index block, and the index gear, but the wire or whatever it is rigged across it I've never seen before. Admittedly I've only seen gear cutting on the mill, vertical and horizontal. Is the wire wrapped around the index arbor to rotate in place as the carriage moves? So this is so the cutter just has to be cut at a straight angle and ends up with the involuted cut by traversing through? Is this how this did it back in the day or did he come up with this?


All here C-Bag. Enjoy.


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## C-Bag

Thanks NortonDomini but nothing's seems to happen when I click on it with my iPad. Is it a pdf ?


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## Mystery1

It is a .zip file with 3 pdf files inside. Surely Apple, the supposed pinnacle of all that is easy to use, could handle that?


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## cg285

dlane said:


> Is a shaper able to do things a mill can’t ?.



not if the mill has a shaper attachment


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## f350ca

Thanks Norton, that will be a great read,

Greg


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## Scruffy

Great for roughing cuts on abravise castings ,really ruff material, welds , rust or just hogging a lot of material off plus you sharpen you tool on your grinder.
Ron


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## C-Bag

Yeah, don't get me started about Apple.....anyway, I got it, thanks NortonDomini, that will keep me busy


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## cjtoombs

I have several shapers both big and small, and I love them.  That being said, if I had to choose between shaper and mill, I would take the mill.  But unless you live in a small apartment, there's no reason to choose.  And if you do live in a small apartment, you should think about getting rid of something so that you have room for both.  The bigest advantage that the shaper has is that it uses cheap tools that are easy to sharpen.  I think about that every time I break a $50 end mill.


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## Dabbler

I just bought a small shaper and I love it.  It is very SLOW do do anything, but the advantage of using 1/4" HSS blanks, and its ability to do keyways easier than my big mill make it an asset.

If you can have only 1 machine, get a vertical mill.  Even internal keyways can be cut on it (yes, I've done it!)  It is a nice luxury to be able to also have  a shaper: they are sexy (!) and do such nice work when used properly!


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## C-Bag

Ok, being to nooB to feel stupid I going to ask. Everything in the vid makes sense except the dividing plates. Did he make them? Or are they for sale somewhere? As usual I'm also not sure what they are called if they do exist. I tried searches for plastic diving wheels, plastic indexing plates and only come up with the metal plates for diving heads. I guess you could use them but they are larger diameter which would change the whole design.


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## Bill Gruby

If you are speaking of the red plates then they are usually made by the user. That whole head is custom made and very well at that.

 "Billy G"


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## C-Bag

Thanks Bill, that was quick. So you would need a dividing head to make them? Or I guess in this case, he has plastic versions of the gears and could use them as the index to cut the slots in the plastic, correct?


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## Bill Gruby

You are correct.

 "Billy G"


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## Mystery1

He 3d printed his, if talking about the video.


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## Giles

Many years ago, we used three different size shapers for rough removal of stock.
Here are photos of a tool I ground and used on a 48"? shaper.
To the best of my memory, this particular 5/8--
	

		
			
		

		
	





	

		
			
		

		
	
Rex49 tool bit was used to remove stock on a 36" bar of cold rolled steel.
Hard to tell from photos but I think machine was set on .040 feed for a cut of app. 5/8"
This really stressed the old shaper, but that's what the boss wanted!


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## C-Bag

Ah, so this was covered in another vid I guess. I guess this is another opportunity for creative problem solving.


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## Mystery1

C-Bag said:


> Ah, so this was covered in another vid I guess. I guess this is another opportunity for creative problem solving.


My link was to the Directors cut, he has one or two longer ones with more detail.


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## C-Bag

I watched them and the directors cut was the best IMHO. In the long separate ones there was no mention of how those dividing plates came about. I get its tough to make a vid period, and it's tough to include what is pertinent. I also know from my limited posting of my project pix what is clear to me doesn't always translate to the rest of the world. But I'm always up for trying to follow up if there are questions and in no way am I dinging your post of his vid or his vid. I appreciate this whole thing. There is so much out there and it's sometimes hard to find without the proper search criteria.


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## NortonDommi

Hi C-Bag,
                Yes Marcus used a 3-D printer but you can use whatever you like as long as it gives the divisions you want. Dividing plates, gears, does not matter it is just something to index the position of the blank.
  That build was part of a competition. Here's the You Tube video's of it.

















  I have been look for some Maag or BoMer cutters as I reckon they would do a better job and speed up the process but the only one I have found are expensive, probably easier to make a piece of rack and use it as a cutter.
  The beauty of using a shaper is that it is so easy to make the cutter and the indexing attachment.
  I have a copy of Planing and Shaping 1915 if anyone is interested.


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## f350ca

I've cut racks on the shaper, I guess this is my next logical step in evolution.

Greg


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## cjtoombs

Here is a magazine article that explains that gear generation method, it also includes a set of plans for that special dividing head.


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## GK1918

Glad to see this site is back-or was it this possesed PC?  for many months.  OK we need a small gear right now. I do not 
have the time or the money for a one time use for a cutter for the mill.  My son bought a 4,000lb trailer winch that took a dump first use.  The motor drive gear broke in half.  So no math no gear jig although I have one gettin to lazy to put it on.
I epoxied the two broken halfs.  Now I ground the profile HSS blank. I turned a steel gear blank and  champered sides.
I turned a mandrel and slid that onto the gear and blank and set that on the vise with gear side toward cutter. Lower tool
into the gear get it dead on and clamp the vise.  Now start cutting the blank till it just swipes the root of the broken gear.
Now rotate to the next tooth- Oh I have two way tape between the blank and the blued gear to see the swipe.  Here is my logic  = wait a month of Sundays for UPS pay for a one time 'real cutter'  and all that hated math,  and by the time they
process my check for said cutter the gear is made.  The hard part - no - I should say the time is grinding the tool exactly.
Now the ole  mill vs shaper will be challanged,  just wait till Adam Booth any day now.  That G&E don't make chips, It
will make red hot bricks fly through the wall.  No end mill can take that kind of cut, why, because the shaper is doing strokes per min. which means one stroke you just zipped a 1/2 deep probably 5/8 wide figure max table travel fo figure..
I would never try that with a mill or you have a flyin end mill.....Knowing Adam he will push the G&E to its max....
We will see..................sam


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## Bob Korves

GK1918 said:


> Glad to see this site is back-or was it this possesed PC? for many months.


This site has had no significant down time.  Probably your computer...


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## RafaelMarujo

C-Bag said:


> And internal splines and shapes along with gears and dovetails. It can leave a really smooth accurate finish too. Close as you can get to a ground finish without a surface grinder. Not to mention it uses lathe type bits to do all of this. But it has a pretty steep learning curve in operation, and proper profiling of tool bits.


I agree completely, but even though you can't learn everything about a shaper quickly, with some study ive been able to pull off amazing surface finishes on my shaper, and I've only had it for 3 weeks!! Ps:ignore the calipers


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