Anyone remember Acrolocs?

[chopsley]

I worked at a place on Western Avenue in Gardina for a while back in the very early '80's. They had several of these tools. I remember them as being really light duty, perhaps 12 tool capacity and they had a strange type of tool holder that was unique to Acroloc. Anyhow, I have a friend that now owns one. I'm going to look at it Saturday afternoon. I'm not expecting much. He is a very skilled manual machinist and tool maker but has very little cnc experiance other than presetting tools. I hope he did not buy a pig with lipstick. I was just wondering if anyone else out there recalls these machines.

 

Thanks...

[Tom Dorgan from American Precision]

We had 2 of these wastes of sheet metal when I first came to work at Standard Mfg. 9 years ago. They were old and worn out with like you say a strange proprietary tool holder. Very light weight. Ours were just worn out.. finally had to use one of them for parts to keep the other one running. I guess they auctioned them off with everything else when they shut that part of the company down.

[gcode]

The first shop I worked in when I got out of the sevice in 1979 had 4 of them.

For their day, they were pretty cool.

As they were the first CNC's I'd ever seen, I was in awe of them. I was a manual machinists and wasn't even allowed to load a part in one.

I do remeber they replaced a 1/2 flute endmill with a 4 flute one night and it sucked the toolholder right off the end of the spindle

It destroyed the part, the fixture, the toolholder

and the drawbar.

 

I hope your friend didn't pay much.

Acroloc bellied up 10+(???) years ago and I'll bet its impossible to get parts.

I was totaly impressed with them back in the day, but knowing what I know now, they are a very light duty machine.

[chopsley]

Thanks Tommy,

I expected as much. I wish my friend had called me before he put out the $. This might be a hard lesson for him. I'll post again after I've seen the thing. He told me he does not like the canary yellow color. I fear that might be the least of his problems.

[jeff]

Try here:

 

Company: Sterling Machinery Exchange

Name: Rick Kruger

Address: 9310 Garvey Ave.

South El Monte, CA 91733-1097

USA

Get Directions

Request Quote/Info

Phone: 626-444-0311

Fax: 626-443-9588

Web: www.sterlingmachinery.com

 

 

They are selling an Acroloc on machinetools.com maybe they can help.

[billystein]

Chop,

The best thing that I remember about acroloc were the girls they had at westec. They would have 10 - 20 honeys in red shorts and white t shirts. They had the most popular booth ay the show.

[iowajim62]

Chop,

 

Yep remember those pos

Place called QMC in El Segundo back in the mid 80's. Had single line General Numerics controller with a billion buttons and switches. Then they got a Acramax VMC with 40 taper that could actually take a cut.

Ran many Apache parts back in those days with those old grunt machines. How about the old Enshu Yuasa VMC's ? Remember those with 6M controls ?

[Verisurf - Ernie Husted]

The machine where the tool holder would fly off when doing a side cut with a 3/4" endmill.

 

-E

[Tim]

Yes I remember them well from the early 80's. There is one up for auction on EBay today. Tell your friend to buy up all of the toolholder parts he can get his hands on, (sear pins,drive cones, springs, and housing rings) and keep the assemblies clean & lubed. Very light duty machine at best, the tool holders seem to be held onto the spindle nose by magic. - Good Luck !

[cblythe3d]

For a few years you could make major money with 5c rotary hole drilling of turned parts on acrolocs.

 

They went the way of the Yugo. (had rear window defroster to keep your hands warm when pushing it)

 

The final curtan call was the innovative sales program that included a big screen TV and presumably the company of one of the female models that lined the lavish Westec booth for the person placing the order.

 

This worked for a while until it became common knowlege and cause for dismissal. As the big screen did not go to the boss in most cases.

 

made on a base of fresh unseasoned unground low carb plate steel accuracy was a joke and of course the tools often fell out when milling.

 

the innovative quick tool changer was fast and cross hole drilling the applacation of choice. Rotary index head cnc drilling machines supplanted them and most were sold as scrap iron.

 

Charlie

[Reece L Gibson]

Back in 76' I spent a week at Bayer Industries in Az.(factory) I went through Programming class with Dave Yarbough.We watched the machine being Built that week and crated up for our shop.

Learned alot from that place. Thats where I learned about Pre-set tooling and Macro programming.