HISTORY OF 3 IN 1

Developed from a desire to have a machine shop to work on race cars, in 1981 John Taylor was afforded the opportunity to travel to China, which had just opened its doors to the west after 30 years of isolation.  After finding a factory that built machine tools, Taylor developed the first prototype 3 in1 machine and started the Shoptask company. 

The first machines produced were simple by today's standards, but had those unique functions that many home hobbyists wanted and were not available from any other source.  The machine combined the functions of a lathe, milling machine and drill press into a single compact and affordable tool.  It took a lot of diligence to get these machines into the market in those early days because of their unique design and because they were made in China.  However, the product proved itself to the consumers and sales grew rapidly.

As the sales of the first units multiplied, Shoptask received a lot of input from owners about things that could make the machine more useable.  Among those was the moving head and larger lathe swing.  Shoptask immediately began modifying one of the older machines to incorporate these features and sent prototypes to the factory. By this time, other tool companies who had originally denigrated the machines began to recognize the viability of this product.  Enco, Harbor Freight and Smithy began buying machines from Shoptask as dealers. 

By 1989, Shoptask had grown from a home based startup company to a legitimate force in the machine tool marketplace with thousands of machines sold worldwide and a dealer network across the US.  This expansion brought further customer input and it became clear that more improvements were needed to satisfy the demand.  Shoptask then developed a new model with significantly more features, most importantly, power feed and thread cutting.  With such success, however, came a downside...  Shoptask found that some of the companies that had signed on as dealers were now contacting the Chinese and making their own deals direct.  At this time, Chinese economics laws were in their infancy, and despite exclusive contracts for the designs, factories making copies of the 3 in 1 design began appearing all across China.  It was at this time that Shoptask made a shift in its fundamental business plan.  First, it was decided to sell only direct to the consumer by mail order and second, Shoptask would establish its own factory in China.

As the reputation of the Shoptask machines had grown in the marketplace during the 1980's , it had also grown in China as well.  Happy that Shoptask and a flood of new companies were ordering their products, the Chinese wanted to move into the area of high technology as well.  In 1986 they contracted with Shoptask to produce 2 prototype 3 in 1 machines with computer control.  Seeing this as an opportunity to open up a whole new market and solve the issue of exclusivity, Shoptask designed and built the new machines with not only CNC , but a number of new features for the regular machinist as well; then moved the production to an entirely new facility dedicated to this one product.  This design was so advanced that it remained the basis of all the Shoptask/ Shopmaster products for nearly 20 years.

As the sales of the 17-20 XMTC model multiplied , so did the consumer input.  In 1997 Shoptask added a whole new series of features to the machine including a bench, push button switches, and a new color as standard equipment.  Consumers loved the added functions and the convenience as well as savings of having the all steel bench as part of the machine package. 

In honor of the new Millennium Shoptask introduced the Shopmaster  2000.  It seemed that no matter how much was added to the machine, the customers had more and more input and requests.  The most common was for more adjustment and stability on the milling head.  Going all the way back to the old 12-22TC machine of the late 80's, it was clear that the design with a single round column holding the mill head was insufficient for anything beyond light milling.  There was simply no way to keep the flex out of the head, so Shoptask began trying  various designs to solve the problem.  They built prototypes  with 2 columns, 3 columns, angle columns, 4 posts etc and continued to experiment until they came up with the 4 column design  called the Quadra Lift.   At first it was only offered  as an option, but it was so popular, that within a short time, nearly every machine  sold had the Quadra Lift installed.

Due to the popularity of the Quadra Lift and the immense amount of time it took us to build them in our shop, we decided to make that feature standard on all our machines.  With further input from our own machine use as well as our loyal customers ( many of whom had traded in their old machines on new ones as each model was introduced) we even further enhanced the mill head stability of the machine with the addition of the 5th column support.  Customers with experience on larger machines told us our mill was now comparable to many production machines in its rigidity.  We also introduced the R-8 mill spindle to handle its increased machining capacities . 

  Even though the Bridgemill was adequate for most home shops, small businesses and vocational schools, founder John Taylor could still not quit fiddling with the design.  Just as in 1981 he again fabricated a complete new prototype, this time with even a longer lathe and greater milling capacity, larger motors and 3 axes power feeds.  Along with this new machine has come another fundamental shift in the overall business plan.  Because there are so many companies selling those old 1980's designs to the low end of the market, Shopmaster has now decided to concentrate only on the high end hobbyist, small business and educational institutions. 

PATRIOT
2008-

The Tri Power was so popular that during 2006-2007 it was sold out
at least 60 days in advance at all times.  Even so, we felt we could
do even better, so we added a number of new features, changed the
paint colors and moved production to one of the most high tech
machine tool factories in China.  Once again we have leapfrogged
ahead of the competition in quality ( ISO 9001), features and value.

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