Shopsmith Forums

Sad story for a great product which I enjoy regularly. I do remember when I first ordered mine, it took 3 months or more to arrive. I had seen some web articles about making your own OPR out of Baltic Birch glue-ups, and was even contemplating that with my nervous energy...

Chris

stephen_a._draper wrote:I spoke with customer service today. The vendor who used to make the overarm pin router item #555970 lost the blue prints for them so unless Shopsmith can find a set they will not be offering it again.

"lost the blue prints"??? I am sorry but that is total bunk. Even if SS had an outside company design the OPR SS should own the prints and must have a copy. If they don't it is contrary to everything we know about SS.

As I understand it, SS bought the rights to the original stand-alone OPR arm from a company called Bryco. You would think that SS has the prints for that, but who knows? Personally, I have a standalone OPR table plus a spare arm (from a basket-case table), so I'm not losing any sleep.

But the Mark V mount, one would think, is a Shopsmith design, and so they should have prints. If not, it's an easy thing to reverse-engineer. The physical pattern for the arm casting would likely be the biggest cost. Wonder if that is missing as well?

Bottom line, if the OPR is not offered in the future, it means that demand is insufficient to justify resuming production. I have no doubt that CNC routers are capturing market share.

Perhaps it is the dies/pattern that has been 'lost'.

by lost... i'd say scraped.

A few years ago the price of scrap was so high, a lot of companys in Ohio / Michigan / indiana cleaned out their old tooling.

Personally, I oversaw the scrapping of the dies / tooling that produced the Checker Taxi Cab. The company made a killing in scrap.

This is just sad. I had hoped to get the newer version someday but I guess that isn't going to happen anytime soon if ever.

Ed

Customer service may have misunderstood, so I'll try to clear things up a bit. A supplier of significant parts of the overarm pin router was unable to locate his copies of the prints (he had stocked inventory and not produced new parts in quite a while).

We need to gather together a replacement set for him. Other priorities (such as reducing some backorders on more important products), have made getting this set of prints together a lower priority.

No ongoing problem is expected from this.

This is more like I would have expected.

And I do hope the back orders get cleared, I have a powerpro that is going on 3 months of wait time and it will not be long and I will have to close up shop for the winter..... would like to get it together and run before then.

Good thing I didn't cross it off my list, still far down the list but hey maybe next summer?

Ed

Agree! That's more like it!
Thanks for the clarification ADMIN!

I am looking for a Christmas 1987 or later Shopsmith catalog that shows the original Overarm Pin Router with the wooden table along with stock numbers and accessories. It is pictured in the Fall 1987 Hands On Magazine on pages 8 and 9.