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leblond heavy duty lathe

frdkrr

Plastic
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Apr 16, 2018
Hi I just purchased a leblond heavy duty lathe it looks like it will swing22"to the bed and 8'between centers machine is 15'long and weighs around 10000lbs with digital readouts I paid $700 for it with a ton of tooling included it cost more to get it home,saved it from going to scrapyard,can anyone help me with the serial numbers NF4465 to find out more info on it looks like its from the thirties,thank you Fred K
 
My 1959 SN Reference Book provides dates for the 20" NF LeBlond lathes from 1920-1957

Last SN of yr 1936: 4452
Last SN of yr 1937: 4469
Last SN of yr 1938: 4487

So 4465 would be 1937-ish. Looks like they were making less than 20 per year, pre-war era.
Just for grins, here are the nos for 20" NF lathes from the war years 1939-46:

Last SN of yr 1939: 4500
Last SN of yr 1940: 4559
Last SN of yr 1941: 4629
Last SN of yr 1942: 4667
Last SN of yr 1943: 4906
Last SN of yr 1944: 4949
Last SN of yr 1945: 5017
Last SN of yr 1946: 5041
 
Exceedingly capable machine tool designed and built by gents that knew what they were about

NF goes right back to 1920 in my serial book in an unbroken line, so here is a scan from about 1930.
 

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Exceedingly capable machine tool designed and built by gents that knew what they were about

NF goes right back to 1920 in my serial book in an unbroken line, so here is a scan from about 1930.

Would you say that illustration is from 1920 rather than 1930 ? I'd be surprised if they were making belt driven lathes in 1930.

Regards Tyrone.
 
More than a few US manufacturers made belt driven lathes into the 1940's- for some that was their whole business (south bend). American Tool among others made serious cone head headstocks alongside the gear heads in the early 40's.

OTOH at that late stage there were lots of motors, so substantially decreased emphasis on lineshafts etc. WRT the lathe pictured, on later machines a motor would be mounted on the lathe's headstock with a short flat belt driving the input shaft. Tuckahoe has a Hendey 4 speed gearhead with a factory motor-mount set up in that way- that approach was well underway before 1920.
 








 
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