machinist's tools
 

Anyone here know any good places to get endmills, drill bits, calipers, mic's, lathe tools, parallels, indicators, etc locally?

Thanks.

Re: machinist's tools
 

I have spare mitutoyo digital caliper or a browne & sharp caliper if you are interested. Both are 6" and work great. I don't really care which one I keep, but I could part with one. I have some other misc. inspection tools too. Grainger also has most of that stuff and their prices are decent.

Re: machinist's tools
 

I have a Kennedy 2 drawer riser with:

1-Brown&Sharpe 6" dial caliper(damn near brand new)
1-Mitutoyo 8" dial caliper (missing crystal)
1-Mitutoyo 0-6" mic set with standards
2-Cheap ass telescoping gage sets
1-Cheaper 0-6" depth mic set
1-Needle file set
1-6" steel rule
1-18" steel rule

Jet, what type of machining do you do? I ran CNC for two years, did a little programing and some manual for a local shop back home. I kind of miss it but not enough to get back into it.

Re: machinist's tools
 

I was a machinist for 9 years. The last 3 1/2 years I was programming citizen swiss machines. They run 3 programs simultaneously and can be interactive between each other. The are considered 9-13 axis machines depending on how you look at them, twin turret with 2 sets of active tooling and 3 sets of standard tooling. Very crazy stuff! I was making medical parts (pace makers, heart pumps, etc.) out of 316SS or titanium.

Re: machinist's tools
 

JET- You ever been down to the IMTS show at the McCormick place in Chicago? I was there several years ago with my Dad. Wanted to eye up some new CNC's for his business. That place is incredible. You can't walk it in a day, unless of course you're not looking at anything. I would love to go again.

Re: machinist's tools
 

I never did make it down there. Productivity in the cities here has a show in sept/oct every year. It isn't huge, but they do some good demo's of different machines.

Re: machinist's tools
 

The Laser & Water Jet cutters are what facinate me the most. I don't really monkey with dad CNC's at all. I did run a CNC wood machining center for a year before i came here. It was a job in between jobs. That was a pretty fun change for a little while. They programmed everything manually. I actually did some stuff on AutoCad at home and took it into work and imported the .dxf files in and entered in the tool requirements, etc. They were pretty impressed with that. Computers are my living so i adpat to that stuff pretty easy. I like the setup portion it it. I would hate to be just a parts loader on a CNC machine.

Re: machinist's tools
 

I went to this a few days ago. I really was great. Food makes everything better.

Re: machinist's tools
 

I took a tour of RMS in Anoka/Ramsey and they said they bought about 30% of Citizens total yearly sales. The guy giving the tour was the head of one of the swiss departments. They also had some german machine that had some crazy amount of axis'. They too made all differnt types of medical parts and some aircraft electrical connector. I thought it was insane to see all that stuff, and it really made me want to pursue that career more.

And I don't think I'd ever buy a Kennedy, althought to be a "sweet" machinist you're supposed to own a shit brown box.
Thanks!

Re: machinist's tools
 

I had interviews and offers from RMS twice. I almost went there before my current job. The Cincom Citizen Swiss M20 is the one I was running. I also ran the L20's. They were the grey and purple ones. Very nice machines once you get used to the controls. Some things are backwards compared to most CNC's.

Re: machinist's tools
 

I didn't do the show, but I visited productivity and saw all of the CNC lathes / mills. It wasn't too exciting but I guess the machines are pretty cool.

Re: machinist's tools
 

I went there with my school, it was cool to see some of the machines and I got free food.