Multi-Headed Vintage Milling Machine

Hi -

I recently bought an unusual vintage (or should I say antique) 7-headed milling machine on Ebay in England. The gentleman who sold it to me is an engineer and designer who has over time worked with several leading Swiss watchmaking companies. He bought this machine in Switzerland and had intended to use it in the manufacture of a production run of watch bracelets, but that particular job didn't go through and as far as I'm aware he never used the machine. It's obviously pretty old and is beautifully made. The spindles have metric scales on them.

I e-mailed some photos of it to Tony of lathes.co.uk. He also is unfamiliar with it, but suggested I approach you guys. Tony posted the pictures on the 'Unknown Machines' section of his site - you can see them here.

I will be very interested to hear if any of you know anything about this type of machine, or anything similar to it. For the record, my intention is to set it up with a motor and drive system and use it as a small-scale versatile workstation. I think it will be an interesting job with belts and pulleys, bearing (no pun intended!) in mind that it has seven spindles 'in parallel'.

All the Best,

gary

Your link did not work for me - the machine is on page 75 of the "unknown" pages.

Rich

I think I got this right, I think this is the address for the photos of his machine: Page Title Thanks to Rich for the starting point.

Tim

Thank you both. There was a bug in my link to the page - now fixed.
Good of you to follow it up.

gary

Looking very much as a 'specialty' machine that can be set up for continued/repeated operations against a single piece.

Seems like the work table would take on a workpiece, and then the table would slowly be moved from one end of it's travel to the other - meanwhile being worked upon by each of the 7 cutterheads in turn.

I might venture to say that the workpiece would need to be "located" by a fixture - and one that is now obviously missing. And given a re-setup of the machine, more than one fixture could be used.

This more or less the milling machine equivalent of the "multi-spindle" drill press which brought a turret lathe repeatability to work presented to a drill press.

Picture of DP below.



Joe in NH

Hi Joe -

yes, I'm pretty sure that's the idea - like a miniature production line.

I also bought a countershaft to go with it.

Still not sure exactly how I'll set up the drive for it, but am open to suggestions...

It will be fun, anyway

Thanks for the reply, and nice picture of the multi-head drill press.

Cheers,

gary

A very interesting old machine. I have to wonder if it was made for some kind of locksmith/key making? When you look at it, what's the need for having all those parallel spindles? It looks like the real advantage is to be able to cut a group of shoulders or notches, with simple adjustability of the position and depth of each. Like a key. It might be an early key duplicator.

Picture a fixture on the table that holds the key. You'd put in a master and, with it shut off, crank it down the line, adjusting all the spindles to fit the notches. Then put in blanks, fire it up, and make the copies.

The drive system is obviously round belt. Overhead is a beam with a bunch of idler pulleys. A single long round belt serpentines up and down, driving all the spindles, with one pulley on a long-travel adjuster, such as a swinging arm with a counterweight. It would have to have a lot of travel to handle all the vertical motion of the spindles.

Bruce - thank you for a very interesting and useful reply.

Your thought that it might be a key duplicator makes sense. I wonder if indeed that is what is was used for... In any case, as you say it's clearly ideally suited to making reptition runs of stepped and notched shapes.

Regarding the drive system, I had got as far as thinking in terms of a round belt (indeed, that's what the previous owner had planned). I had thought of one adjustable idler pulley in order to take up slack, allowing for spindle adjustment. However, I hadn't thought of using a row of idlers. I can see that the serpentine arrangement that it would allow would enable all the spindles to turn in the same direction while giving the belt sufficient purchase on each pulley. I have a lovely piece of French oak that would make a very funky support pillar or beam.

I also hadn't thought of using a counterweight to tension the belt - a much better idea than either of my thoughts, i.e. fiddling about all the time manually adjusting the tensioner or using a spring to pull the mounting arm tight.

Thanks to your suggestions I now have a clear idea of where to go with this.

I bought a motor to go with the machine, but am considering going 3-phase with an inverter, for variable speed. My feeling is that the machine is venerable enough to deserve as good a setup as possible.

It will now be obvious that I have very little experience of engineering - but I am here to learn!

All the Best,

gary