Talk:Fay automatic lathe

Surviving examples?

As recently as 2001, Cigas Machine Shop, Inc. had a Fay automatic lathe for sale. See: www.cigasmachine.com/surplus_pdf/fay.pdf . ---User:HopsonRoad 12:03, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

I bet there are still some out there, some sitting idle, some even still making parts. I would bet, too, though, that most of them have been scrapped by now, because businesses large, medium, and small now would tend to use a CNC lathe for the class of work that Fays did. But I doubt if there's any way to find out for sure what percentage of them are still existing. Probably someone who runs a machine tool dealership / industrial surplus / auction house would know anecdotally better than anyone else, having a better sense of how rare it is to run across one anymore. Unlike with Grandpa's old Bridgeport that almost no one would dream of scrapping, it's kind of a different ball game with the types of high-volume-repetitive-production machine tools that are subject only to cold corporate calculation. Someone runs the numbers on the space a machine takes up, the total expected costs per part (fixed and variable, setup and operation, programming versus fixturing), and what the accounting scenario could look like if the same money was instead invested in CNC machines and tooling (opportunity cost). That corporation would prefer to sell the old machine to some other smaller shop rather than get fewer dollars for it as scrap iron, but after enough years, not even small shops would typically be very interested in buying it, for the simple reason that it typically won't help them to compete with anyone else on bidding unit price on contracts. There's someone out there who can bid lower and get the work, even despite the initial cost of their CNC equipment. A rough analogy is that in the 40 years since they were built, 1970 Ford Mustangs have never stopped being worth something to someone other than as scrap, and hence many of them are still around ("many" being relative—who knows whether it's 10% or 50% of them—maybe someone knows if they're a Mustang-hobby-nut). But if you start looking for 1970 Ford 4-door station wagons, I suspect only 2% of them haven't been scrapped yet. They eventually reached a point in history where almost no one had any use for them other than as scrap metal. That's roughly the analogy with machine tools. Grandpa's Bridgeport is the classic V-8 Mustang coupe of the machine tool world, and it gets preserved. Meanwhile, machine tools that no one was overly sentimentally attached to are the old station wagons of the world. There are still a few out there somewhere, but most of us never see them. — ¾-10 19:53, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Good analogy, ¾-10. Is there a way to provide a citation for your last paragraph in the article? Clearly, the condition of the machine offered, above helps confirms what you're saying. Cheers, User:HopsonRoad 21:10, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't know how to reference it currently, but I may figure out a way eventually. Somewhere in a back issue of a trade journal, there's probably something to cite. If I come up with anything, I'll cite it here. Later! — ¾-10 22:08, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

What does it do and how does it do it?

By paraphrasing the technical literature, we have reported what the machine does and how it does it, using technical terminology. I would find it helpful to understand in lay-person's terms what "turning on centers" and "work done on arbors" mean, i.e. how does the machine hold the work as it turns. It would also be helpful to explain how (if this is the case) a cam follows a template workpiece and duplicates it at the cutting tool. User:HopsonRoad 00:02, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Good idea (layman's pegagogy). A tall order to explain it well on Wikipedia, but not impossible. Some of it is conveyed at the articles "lathe center", "lathe dog", and "mandrel", but even after reading those, the layperson may feel uncertain. Here's a helpful textbook chapter in the meantime: Moltrecht, Karl Hans (1981), "Chapter 8: Turning on lathe centers", Machine Shop Practice, New York: Industrial Press, pp. 220–251, ISBN 0831111267 Video animation would be very effective pedagogically, but beyond my ability to contribute currently. Good idea for the (eventual) future, though. Here's a video that shows shafts being turned while chucked at the headstock end and riding a center on the tailstock end. On a CNC lathe with turrets. Not exactly the same, but close enough to give someone the basic idea of what it looks like to see automated turning of a shaft. — ¾-10 04:13, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the references, ¾-10, I'll look them over and see if I can make something with them for you to critique. Cheers, User:HopsonRoad 23:57, 6 September 2010 (UTC)