This is for my own edification, not for problem resolution.
Do any graybeards on here remember the old K&T CNC machines? The shop I worked at in the 80s and 90s had several of these, but I am having an impossible time remembering the specific model. I would appreciate a nudge from someone with more functioning brain cells than what I have left all these years later.
Specifics (well, as specific as I can remember!)
Open table; table was about 48" square.
Programs loaded via paper tape (we only used the mylar tape for the 'exec tape.')
Each toolholder needed to have several 'large' and 'small' washers mounted in-line up by the gage line; the machine would read each tool when it went by, converting the large and small washers into ones and zeros, which were then turned into tool numbers.
The tools lived in a carousel (on one of the machines; the others had a serpentine belt system with the 'washer readers.') The carousel was located on the back of the machine, at an angle to the floor such that the tools were loaded into the pots down by operator level, but the tool going into the spindle was picked up by the scissors at the top of the carousel, up above the top of the Y-axis.
There was a separate control box cabled to the machine; iirc it included redundant feedrate overrides as well as cycle start and stop, estop, etc.
And of course that good old hideous green paint that nearly every machine had back then.
I keep thinking it was a "KT750" model, but my google-fu skills are not confirming that was a thing.
A friend ran those, so I can't draw on any further memories. I was more of a lathe guy, and hung out mostly on Warner Swasey chuckers (GE 1050 control!) and Cincinnati Milacron lathes (who needs decimal points??!?!)
This summer, I'm planning on getting together with some friends who used to work with me there, and have spent the past week strolling down amnesia lane... and these KT's are bugging me; I can find pictures online of nearly every machine we had at that shop except for those.
Reply with Quoteand those washer things were called code rings. Enjoy
1980s-1990s Kearney & Trecker CNC Horizontal mill
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