Oddball machine heads anyone?

dogooder

dogooder

Well-known member
The Firebird I just traded for have these odd machine heads I have never seen before. I looked on ebay and reverb for a picture
and couldn't find one? The heads tuner knobs (or I think it is the lock) sits vertical to the headstock instead of sticking out the sides.
There is a cylindrical metal knob (the tuning knob I think) on the back of the neck. I will find or take a picture soon. Anyone know
who makes these, there is no brand name on them, priceless.
 
headless machine heads on a non headless
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Like the ones on that firebird. Seems like someone switched these out because there are holes there for standard machine heads. According
to the serial number this one was made in 2010
 
Hard to say what you've got there, can't see the keys. I've seen a couple designs - here's something similar :

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A lot of firebirds use banjo tuners. Probably Klusons usually - not sure about Epiphone. What you're describing might be Steinberger or something.
 
LazerBeakShiek said:
YEAH AND THAT STICKS OUT THE BACK SIDE, WHICH IS A SIDE.
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As a machinist for over fifty years, if I were to draw a blueprint of a headstock I would have the top view (as the guitar lays on its back looking down at the neck),
a bottom view, and a side view. so to me, the tuning knobs stick out the side and the gearbox is on the bottom view. The bottom view would not be considered a
side in the trade so I apologize for my transgression.
 
A saw cut billet of rectangular or square bar stock has 6 sides. Left, right, front, back, top, bottom. They're all sides.

People used conventional standards for drawings more in the past. I like 3rd angle orthographic projection with maybe an isometric view for clarity and properly labeled sectional views or bubbles when necessary. Seems like anything goes these days. I've seen drawings with a section labeled "back view", flipped backwards from standard orthographic. I'm not sure why it's necessary to do that. It's not as frustrating as some of the dimensioning and tolerancing mistakes that can be quite common sometimes. Seems like the people who make the drawings aren't always required to know what they're doing.

What's 10 thou amongst friends, right?
 
snow lizard said:
A saw cut billet of rectangular or square bar stock has 6 sides. Left, right, front, back, top, bottom. They're all sides.

People used conventional standards for drawings more in the past. I like 3rd angle orthographic projection with maybe an isometric view for clarity and properly labeled sectional views or bubbles when necessary. Seems like anything goes these days. I've seen drawings with a section labeled "back view", flipped backwards from standard orthographic. I'm not sure why it's necessary to do that. It's not as frustrating as some of the dimensioning and tolerancing mistakes that can be quite common sometimes. Seems like the people who make the drawings aren't always required to know what they're doing.

What's 10 thou amongst friends, right?
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I used to say whats a couple of tenths among friends yeas ago lol. My foremen liked that, owners not so much. Tenths of thousandths that is. .010 can be a bid deal. I have worked with giant 5 -10 page blueprints and would have a rolling chair and them hung up and roll back and forth between them. Yes, blueprints are a lot of fun. Now days they tell you to refer to the solid for quite a few measurements. Funk that. I took over head of inspection in a big shop that I had run a couple of cells in and one of the first things I told management was I was not going to sit there or have any of the people working under me going to solids to get measurements. I told them when I was running the cells, myself and the guys would have the necessary measurements for the part they were making already taken from the solid and written on the print or how could they check their parts? I told them the whole shop has to do this or the parts will not get inspected. If I had to get some measurements off the solids using Mastercam I would, but some of the people under me didn't know how. As a matter of fact, when that job was taken on, either a blueprint should have been demanded, or produced one themselves before it hit the shop floor. How else could they even quote the job. My experience was the people who quoted the jobs were, how should I put it..
I have worked in mostly job shops. In most of the shops I worked when the job hit the floor I had to figure out how to do it? How did they quote the job? Some shops, very few, would have a traveler with the order of operations etc. spelled out. I worked as a machinist/CNC programmer for over 50 years and have worked in over 50 different shops. It was fun and paid me well. I never had to worry about a job and if I had any problems I could just walk.
 
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The trade has been good to me. About the closest tolerance I ever worked with was 3 tenths using a micro boring head on a Fanuc horizontal boring mill. I figure they'd save that kind of thing for grinders. Around 14 years ago the shop was talking about "paperless manufacturing" where they were going to stop issuing prints to the floor. When they rolled it out it lasted about 10 minutes. I asked how they wanted me to do the 1st article and they gave me a print. A lot of the stuff on the print was missing from the model. The model showed a 5/8 hole with no tolerance. Could have been 5/8 NC for all we knew. I spent 2 years of my apprenticeship in a jobbing shop and the experience was huge. Had to learn how to improvise and be creative. Some of the "drawings" there were ball point sketches on a napkin. Still works as long as the info is there.

The "what's 10 thou amongst friends?" is just me being sarcastic. I was trying to tell a programmer doing a giant stainless disc for a heat exchanger with 76 2.8 inch bores in it that the G91 subprogram had to return to the center before M99. He said it would read the Y coordinate in the main program but most of the moves were on X and didn't have a Y. He took over running the job for me during lunch. When I came back he told me he fucked up the part. That day it was "what's 400 thou amongst friends?"

What's scary these days is seeing shops running ads for machinists for like a year and not finding anybody. My mentors retired a couple of decades ago and there aren't enough apprentices coming up.
 
dogooder said:
I used to say whats a couple of tenths among friends yeas ago lol. My foremen liked that, owners not so much. Tenths of thousandths that is. .010 can be a bid deal.
Click to expand...

snow lizard said:
The trade has been good to me. About the closest tolerance I ever worked with was 3 tenths using a micro boring head on a Fanuc horizontal boring mill. I figure they'd save that kind of thing for grinders. Around 14 years ago the shop was talking about "paperless manufacturing" where they were going to stop issuing prints to the floor. When they rolled it out it lasted about 10 minutes. I asked how they wanted me to do the 1st article and they gave me a print. A lot of the stuff on the print was missing from the model. The model showed a 5/8 hole with no tolerance. Could have been 5/8 NC for all we knew. I spent 2 years of my apprenticeship in a jobbing shop and the experience was huge. Had to learn how to improvise and be creative. Some of the "drawings" there were ball point sketches on a napkin. Still works as long as the info is there.

The "what's 10 thou amongst friends?" is just me being sarcastic. I was trying to tell a programmer doing a giant stainless disc for a heat exchanger with 76 2.8 inch bores in it that the G91 subprogram had to return to the center before M99. He said it would read the Y coordinate in the main program but most of the moves were on X and didn't have a Y. He took over running the job for me during lunch. When I came back he told me he fucked up the part. That day it was "what's 400 thou amongst friends?"

What's scary these days is seeing shops running ads for machinists for like a year and not finding anybody. My mentors retired a couple of decades ago and there aren't enough apprentices coming up.
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I took a part time job when I moved here, 3 days a week. I told my would be foreman I was no kid and I wouldn't take any shit, almost in that language. Well he was my foreman and a good guy. He took a week off for his fathers death and his boss, (the so called programmer) took over. He didn't like me to begin with because I was a yankee and in conversation with my foreman overheard me say I went to Catholic school. He went on to tell me I was the spawn of the devil. Well, he gave me some shit and I told him when Nick comes back you can tell him why I quit. I picked my tools up the next day. I am looking for another part time job but they all want 40 hrs etc. I told Nick I would go back to work there once that guy leaves. He tells me he won't be long. I worked in a place in Denver, Zimmerman Metals, we had a Carlson Boring mill with 60 feet of travel in the X and 20 feet in the Y and I think 6-8 feet in the spindle. The machine moved on railroad tracks. We a bunch of other huge boring mills and lathes. This guy had the biggest
machines west of the Mississippi and east of California. Every job was like one big experiment lol. It was a good place to work. It was also a structural steel shop, lots of interesting stuff going on. I got laid off around 88 and moved over to Grand Junction. I worked most of my career in job shops in the northeast. I worked in Colorado for about ten years. The jobs were so plentiful at the time I could get one on the way home if I were naked.
 
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