Monarch Shapemaster

[lathehand]

Monarch Lathes built the Shapemaster to machine bottle molds etc. I have a memory of seeing a photo of a Coke bottle mold but no memory of the lathe.

I have an active thread on the Antique Machinery forum about the Blanchard gunstock lathe and the many uses of the principle of the copying lathe. Ries posted a note about the Shapemaster and I'm posting the queston here. Does anyone have further information on this machine? I think it probably not a copying (Blanchard type) lathe.

TIA
Carl

 

[rammerc]

Shapemaster

Carl,

A few months ago I was talking to Rick B up in Michigan about Rose Engines and Medallion machines and he mention the Shapemaster.

He had a catalog he had purchased and copied it and sent me one. Interesting machine.

Try googling it, I think I found some other information.

Rick

 

[Ries]

I will try and scan some of what I have. It is not a copying lathe at all.
It is a standard Monarch, but with an extremely complicated cam operated mechanical compound.
You make a cam, and then the compound moves following the cam.
The controls were electromechanical, by Keller.
In the horrible quality scan below, the cam is on the bottom right- and it has all the patterns in it sequentially, which in turn make the plate that is in the chuck.
The brochure is about ten pages long, but most pages are even harder to see than this one.

The ornamental turning guys, people like Jon Magill, who made the particle board rose engine kit-
OTI :: View topic - Jon Magill's Rose Engine - DIY
and Fred Armbruster, who recently built a run of amazing new ornamental turning lathes (pic of his Mark II here- Home)
that rival Holtzappfels in quality,
have been trying to find one of these for years.

I have never seen a photo of an actual lathe, just copies of the factory brochure.
My guess is that if there are any left, they are at places like Gillander or Kopp in Pennsylvania, where they make molds for glass lenses for traffic lights and airport runway lighting. Of course, now they use CNC, but they might still have one in the back room.

Technical Glass - Kopp Glass - Technical Glass Manufacturing
Gillinder Glass, Custom Glass Manufacturers

 

[jlegge]

The "ShapeMaster' was actually an adaption of standard Monarch lathes with a rotary tracer. It was able to turn any shape imagable. One use was to make complex cam shapes use to control other type of automatic machinery, but it found a home in the mold industry. Monarch use to have a display case showing all the different molds made on the ShapeMaster including the mention "coke" bottle, but also the flutted pepise and diamond patterned orange crush bottles.

The last ShapeMaster was a modified Series 612 equipped with 4 working spindles and one master spindle, and was built in the 1970's. In the early 1990's Monarch was getting requests to build more ShapeMasters, but it was not economical to do so, so they decline the offer.

John

 

[jlegge]

picture of rotary profiler "ShapeMaster" 612 lathe.

 

[MCSF]

Could you explain a little more about how it would use the additional spindles?

 

[jlegge]

the spindle in the left (as you faced the spindle) had the master of the mold and then a stylist would trace over the shape as it revolved. The cutting tool would then replicate the shape in the other four spindles so you could make four parts at once. This was all ID work. It also would be possible to turn non-round shapes on the OD, but this machine was made for the bottle mold industry which did all ID work.

Early versions of the Shapemaster were signle spindle machines and only were mounted to 16" or larger machines due to the size of the tracer.

John

 

[Ries]

The brochure I have must be for an early one- it is single spindle, which is why I said it was not a copying lathe.
Obviously, one with 4 spindles would be a copying lathe, or something similar.

I still wanna know if anyone has actually seen one of these in the flesh, or used one.

 

[rimcanyon]

I have a 20 page brochure on Shapemaster from 1946, which shows only single spindle machines driven by cams. It does have a picture of a coke bottle mold, and the brochure cover is embossed using a mold made on the Shapemaster. The picture in Ries' post shows the mold for the brochure cover.

-Dave

 

[Ries]

I wonder if my copy originally came from your brochure?
I got it from Jon Macgill, but his was only a xerox as well.

 

[bythebookbob]

I remember visiting the Toronto Science Centre in 1982 and they had a machine tool exhibit which featured a Monarch (I believe) with a Coca Cola bottle form machined out of steel. The machine was "running" very slowly no chips being made as the shape had already been machined. The equipment looked to me to as new. I wonder what became of that exhibit.

 

[Mebfab]

Several years ago asset sales (auction house) had a sale up in Jersey? They had several of the multi spindle jobs. Dont know whay happened to the brochure with the pictures.

 

[Ries]

I found this video online, evidently posted by the above mentioned rick b. I still wanna know- is anyone aware of one of these lathes still existing, anywhere in the world.?

 

[guythatbrews]

That is pretty neat. Crazy high relief on some of those tools. Gotta love the no safety glasses.

 

[Machinery_E]

Local mold shop had a ShapeMaster when I was last there, which was about 5 years ago. Not sure if its still there, it had not been used in awhile-like Ries said, it was "in the back room." It might be the one John was talking about being the last one made-it was a 612 with 4 spindles.

 

[m-lud]

I have so much respect for the designers of that era. They didn't have examples of designs to copy or modify like today.
I have never seen a copying lathe in action. I know this isn't a conventional lathe with an added copying attachment
There were some that were directly mechanical linked in operation but have always wondered about the ones controlled by hydraulics, and or pneumatics. The valve body and the follower that made it work. Early Joystick control