History/Info wanted ???

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wally318
Posts: 260
Joined: Sun Jun 05, 2011 1:06 am
Location: Kelowna, British Columbia

History/Info wanted ???

Post by wally318 »

A while back I bought a nice set of SPI angle blocks/plates from 1 to 30 degrees.
Unlike some of their latest(current ) offerings.
These have Made in USA lazered on them.
Any here with a bit of history in them. I'd like to find out who made them for SPI?
Brown & Sharpe, Suburban, Anton machine or other???
pete
Posts: 2518
Joined: Tue Feb 10, 2009 6:04 am

Re: History/Info wanted ???

Post by pete »

This won't help much, but afaik SPI has for at least the 20 or more years farmed out all of there products to various manufacturers and sometimes using more than one manufacturer for the same item and during the same time period. Without further manufacturer identification on those angle blocks it's probably impossible to nail down exactly who it might have been. During the same time period B&S has pretty much concentrated on there CMM business and I don't think they now produce anything other than the CMM's. Anything else seems to be outsourced such as there high end .00005" B&S DTI's or made for them offshore (Parallel Sets etc.) B&S is now a very pale shadow of what it once was so I'd guess those angle blocks weren't made by them. At one time I think original SPI company did manufacturer everything with there name on it and was very well respected for high quality. The company was sold and then started outsourcing products with there name on it. A lot of it was/is high quality and some no better than below average far east tooling.

I bought a 4" capacity grinding / tool maker vise maybe 10 years ago that has the Accu Pro name on it. It's the nicest and most accurate vise of that type I've had my hands on. MSC Industrial would only tell me it was American made but not by who. And like your angle blocks there's no other manufacturer marks on it. But it's well below the .0002" allowable deviation in every dimension I've checked on it and had an absolutely flawless surface grinder finish on it. So unless you knew the rough manufacturing date of those angle blocks and then somehow found someone who worked for the company making them for SPI it's doubtful you'll ever find out who it was. I do remember some older posts about SPI on the Practical Machinist forums so a search there might dig up a bit more?
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