Tom, I am sure that you watched this video and saw so much more than everybody else simply because you have been there and used the tools. Miss seeing you on my trips to Alabama!

I used ibm punchcards my first year out of engineering school. The company i worked for and many others were scrapping the card cabinets and the legal size files. They really do make great tool cabinets. I will have to make the sliding top boxes; great idea.

Probably about as complex as the Teletype machines I worked on for the Telephone Co....early 1970's

Engineers......

I've been thinking about getting a gantry, but adjusting the height... I had been thinking about things like jacks on a stack of boxes, but somehow that didn't seem too safe. ;-)

Kieth,I hate to say it but he's one of the first engineers I've encountered with common sense solutions lol.

People like to talk trash on them but chances are they're usually the jealous ones without enough machines ;) All joking aside I came up with a setup that allows me to use a little impact and run bolts down that have feet on them to level things off and keep them from rolling.I cut them from 1/4 and 1/2 plate and they pretty much are just a tab that bolts between the caster and machine and it sticks out just enough(1.5 inches) for the foot that is attached to the heavy duty bolt.I can easily move and level a machine in 5 min or so and while they're not the most accurate I use stick on bubble levels to get things really close.Lets face it they are good enough for a band saw and press etc..........I can just roll my press out,zip the bolts down with a bat powered impact and align the bubbles and done.

Mike Ni

An engineer does have a rather different way of looking at the world.

I can remember seeing the keypunch cards being used, and saw a good bit if it, but to be honest with you, I never actually had to do any programs with them (thank goodness). I still think that it is funny that in one software package that I use the command to enter your data is "Cards". Of course these days, the program just looks for a text file or Excel spreadsheet to get the data....

Me too! I've wanted a Marvel-Saw ever since I saw my 1st one at the Pearl Harbor Naval shipyards, and now that I live here on the mainland there is a much greater chance of that happening. Only a very few were ever shipped to the islands, and those ones are subject to rusting in the humid and salty air, so all machine tools are rare in the 50th state.

I would be interested. How can I get in touch with you. Neil

You want blueprints for Keith Rucker? That will take up allot of your hard-drive's memory with all of the DNA sequence code...LOL! JK, I know you meant hoist, not "host"...though both are top quality machines ;)

He might be the same John Stevenson who is a moderator on one of the Practical Machinists forums.

bbs.homeshopmachinist.net/threads/49911-Well-nearly-a-slotter-gloat/page3 the crane is on this thread. John Stevenson' motorbike engineer is the way to find him.

John Stevenson is a frequent poster and, I think, a moderator on both the Mad Modders forum and the Model Engineer forum ( www.model-engineer.co.uk/ ).

he has his own hobbies at weekends

Actually, Neil deGrasse Tyson and I have exchanged emails a few times. We have similar ages and families and I used to get his travel voucher notifications when I worked at NASA. Small world.