Thread: Wickman OPG Optical Grinder.

You can send them to me one at a time if you want Mark lathefan @ beagle.com.au I can upload them to my dropbox account and then they can be downloaded by anyone with the link...

G'day Mark.

Good to see you down here. This is were the Aussie's hide, when the other forums are on the nose. How did you find us?

RC is a good mate of mine. His dropbox thing would be a good a place as any to hold those files. That way any one else that needs them can use them.

One of my best ever customers had a building full of Wickmans, even rotating them back through the U.K for full reconditioning as long as a decade ago. The went #### up about this time last year. Probably 2 dozen Wickmans went for auction. A couple of them went into containers for Graff - Pinkert in the States. And a MS32 & MS 18 Index's.

Any way, they didn't even a Wickman Grinder. Just Macson tool & cutter grinders, which is our copy of a Cincinnati #2. And a Fanuc Wire EDM.

Originally Posted by Stustoys

Hows Monday looking?

I'll be in all day today. My bookkeeper is due in at 9.00am. So I cant go far, but far enough for lunch.

Regards Phil.

Originally Posted by Michael G

It's a pity - ever since GQ moved to Queensland, Stuart has no one to compete with for this stuff.
Greg - come back! We need you to spur Stuart on!

Michael

Not - necessarily. I'm driving over to Melbourne in 3 weeks or so. Have to go & see Phil about other stuff anyway. However I already have a cylindrical grinder and a refrigerated air chiller for my big compressor to haul back so space is limited. OTOH I could take a trailer if the price was right....

Interesting that a certain lathe hasn't departed for the north. I wonder what sort of motor is in it...... ? (reference to another thread).

PDW

Hi Phil.Graaf Pinkert were good buyers,always paid a fair price for everything.I remember going into a place in England run by a mother and daughter as the father had passed.They were making hydraulic fittings on 1.3/4" and 3.1/2" single spindle Wickmans and had decided it was cheaper to buy the fittings in.I was there to buy the 3.1/2" machine,the others were scrap but someone wanted the swarf conveyors from them for about £20 each.I told her to hold on while I phoned Pinkerts guy and he said "pull them to the door and I'll give her £400 each". They wired the money straight into her account within a few hours before picking them up.
When I stopped running multis the Wickmans went to a rebuilder in Spain for cnc'ing.

If it were in Qld, I'd be beating down your door to get it.

K.

Originally Posted by Machtool

Gentlemen.

Have any of you blokes ever seen a tool grinder like this one? Its an English Wickman OPG Optical Grinder. It has a Taylor Hobson optical profile projector as part of it, and some sort of pantograph arm for doing something. I've googled it, and don't know much about it much more than that. I've never seen one before.
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Wickman OPG Optical Profile Ginder in operation - YouTube

A grinder with optics. Did you hear that STU???? I have one here, long story short, I picked up R.C's grinder from down in Seaford on Sunday. The gentlemen that sold the grinder was a retired tool and cutter grinder for one of the special purpose tooling companies. Approaching his 70's so he just wanted it gone out of his shed. As Richard had all ready laid down $400 bucks for a fork lift, I extracted it for him.

This really isn't a for sale post, its more of a "I got stuck with this machine that now taking up space". Can anyone use it? I thought I'd ask here before I flip it on Ebay. Apart from that, its an interesting machine.

Regards Phil.

i saw one of these yesterday in a scap pile

as soon as i saw it i thought of stu and bt. not because it was in the scrap pile
because of the big funky radar like viewer and all the microscope heads poking out near the grinding wheel.
aaron

I worked at Repco in East Bentleigh, Melbourne in the 1980's and these machines cut and maintained all the special tooling (step drills etc) for machining brake components. It was incredible what could be done on them. I never worked on one but a lot of the cutting tools I designed were made using one of these machines.

regards mgtoolmaker

Well Sanata came early, with thanks to santas little helper Phil the Wickman has landed in my shed, damn he makes it look easy.
I'd read the manual (with thanks Mark) and thought I had a handle on how it all worked, having got my hands on the machine I'm not so sure anymore lol. Should keep me out of trouble for awhile.
The good news is the motor has the star point bought out. The tranformer has 240V tap for the lights(thought they are 12V anyway so no biggy).
The clamp that holds the wheel spindle has a little issue, its cast(I assume) Aluminium. It seems to be holding the spindle well enough ATM so I'm not going to touch it just yet. As far as fixing it goes, I've only ever MIGed and TIGed Alum sheet and that was a old time ago. I have no idea about welding cast. Can I just make a dummy spindle and some packers to put under the clamps to force them back into place. Vee out the crack a little and just lay bead on top of bead to build up some thickness. Or would it be better to weld say a 3mm plate over the top? Super glue?..........

Stuart.

Gees Stuart, can you imagine how much poorer we would be had we not done the scraping class. Un-ending assistance from Phil always
Can't wait to see that one up and running. And churning out wondrous things.
I still don't know what it does but boy am I enjoying this holiday. (Insert smiley)

Phil

Originally Posted by Steamwhisperer

I still don't know what it does but boy am I enjoying this holiday. (just to help out a mate)

It means that instead of saying "I wish I had a tool shaped like ____"
P1010940 (Medium).JPG

You 'll be able to say "Stuart, can you grind me a tool that looks like ____"

those are all bits of HSS ground for making car hose and pipe fittings (brake lines, coolant lines, oil lines etc) that ran on the 6 speed autos.

Michael

Nice one Stuart, I looked at it when it was at Phil's and it looked to be in pretty good nick... no idea how it works or exactly what it does, so I'm going to be watching with interest as you unravel the puzzle..

Regards
Ray

PS... As soon as I saw "OPTICAL" and "GRINDER" I knew where it was going to end up!

I did wonder what the "back to cleaning up" in the metric/imp thread really meant. You must be like me, you only clean up when you need to make space for a new machine.......

Well done

shame about the casting. Surely a bit of chewy will suffice

You'll just have to move the furnace build along and cast a new one!

Ew

Sorted now I thought the pantograph was linked to the table but its not, you move it by hand in as many steps as you need.

Hi Phil,
Yes, "above and beyond" springs to mind.

Thanks Michael, taking orders for form cutters tomorrow

Yes Ray its pretty easy to bait me hehe

Ewan I could see a full 1/8 of the shed floor............ though the rest of the shed stuffered some to make that happen lol(not like it was spotless before hand)

Stuart