Some of my toys at school

[Crazy_pilot]

Thought I'd post this up for fun. Some of the niftier tools we have at school:

The Victor Lathe. It's main job is to turn aluminum test samples that we destroy in our materials lab.



The little stuff. Drill press, manual mill, manual lathe just off the left side of the picture.



Our fancy CNC lathe, which has only ever turned one piece because no one knows how to run the damn thing, and all the instructions are in German. Behind it is the 2.5 ton press.



The workhorse of our machine center, the 3-Axis OKK CNC mill. The school bought it brand new in 1985 or so. It still hits within a couple ten thousandths when we have it measured and calibrated.



One of our latest additions is the HAAS CNC gantry router, which came in this summer. It has a 10x6 foot working envelope, 10,000 RPM spindle, and vacuum table. Only problem is that we don't currently have a vacuum pump powerful enough to allow full use of the table...



And our crown jewel, the HAAS 5-Axis mill. It's also brand new and has only run a couple parts because we're still short tooling for it, and because our teachers need some more training on it before we can take advantage of it's full capabilities.



Not bad for a small school and even smaller program. We only graduate ~10 people a year.

[SVXBart]

Cool tools!
What kind of school are you in?

[Crazy_pilot]

My program is called Aerospace Manufacturing Engineering Technologist. Basically the goal is to work in the aerospace industry in a pretty wide range of jobs. Machinist, tool designer, floor management, operations, assembly method analyst... We also have composites (carbon fiber, etc) facilities, extensive welding, metal working, and heat treating equipment, and are getting into robotics.

One of the best things is that the profs encourage us to experiment. In our final year we have a year-long design project which is completely open ended, within the realm of possibility. People have build snowmobile lifts, carbon fiber bagpipes, carbon fiber guitar cases... One guy this year is building a full one-of suspension for his Honda CRX road racer. My current idea is a custom carbon fiber intake manifold for the SVX.

[Landshark]

can you make me a sweet handle for my kegerator tap?

[SilverSpear]

So you basically have 3 HI-TECH machines that you dunno how to operate and 3 basic ones?

J/K cool toys, I envy you

[MadMaxSvx]

Is that a MAZAK CNC lathe? They are japanese, why the instruction are in german?

[Crazy_pilot]

Originally Posted by MadMaxSvx

Is that a MAZAK CNC lathe? They are japanese, why the instruction are in german?

Sorry, my bad. Either way, they're incomprehensible to the profs here.

The only machine that sits completely idle is that lathe. The router has already cut hundreds of parts and the 5-axis is just lacking some tooling.