1959 Monarch Turning Machines Brochure

Today I received an original 35-page Monarch brochure from 1959. I won this on an eBay auction. At some point, when I get my scanner hooked up again, I'll take some high-quality scans of it and post the images.

The brochure is both interesting and educational. The section on the 10" Model EE (Monarch's name for it) includes a picture of a facility with at least 20 of them manned and operating.

There is a page covering the Model 1000, with two good pictures of it.

There is coverage of the 612 Lathes (Models 1610, 2013, 3516 and "T" versions of each, and raised Models 1610-13, 2013-16 and 2516-19).

Dyna-Shift Series 62, Series 80, and Series 90 are covered. The Series 90 was produced in lengths up to 324" and could be had with two carriages. There is a picture of a two-carriage machine.

The brochure presents some lathes that I hadn't heard of before, such as the Missile Master Lathes, Series 170. As the name implies, these were "designed for the contour turning, boring and facing of missile components or other large thin-walled and fabricated parts". They were available in 4' increments up to 300" between centers. The Model 6750 and 8567 offered swing over bed of 67" and 85" respectively. Standard face plate diameter was 50".

The tracer lathes include the Mona-Matic Model 20-H, Model 21, and Model 21-H.

Paper tape numerical control units were available for use on the Series EE, Model 1000.

Air guage tracers were covered as well as the Rotary Profile Tracer Lathe.

The Monarch-Keller Countour Turning Lathes covered a set of controls that could be added to any lathe larger than the Model 1610. "These lathes are recommended for fast, accurate, economical turning, facing and boring of irregular contours of circular cross-sections from a thin metal template".

The controls could be quickly disengaged to permit normal turning.

The Speedi-Matic Model B was a hand operated screw machine that looked to be based upon a 10 EE. It had a "power feed, ram type turret, the turret head of which is hydraulically indexed, hydraulically located in the new position to an accuracy of less than .0002" and hydraulically clamped in position.

There was a Heavy Duty Roll Turner lathe with 30 H.P. DC motor. Shipping weight 34,900 pounds.

Very interesting was the Ultra-Precision Contouring Lath, Series 180. "It was developed specifically for ultra-precision machining of thin-wall spherical and related shape work pieces, contouring O.D. and I.D. with a total accumulated error of plus or minus 75 millionths of an inch, or less."

The machine drive was isolated from the lathe bed and flexibly coupled to the spindle.

"The spindle bearing lubricant is refrigerated, the floor mounted tracer hydraulic tank is separately cooled and coolant temperature is controlled within + or - 0.5 degrees."

Spindle nose runout less than 0.000025". Total accumulated error from stylus point to tool 0.000020".
"The machine is built and tested in a temperature-controlled area and must be so operated."

60" Right Angle Lathes Model O and F were shown

The last inside page addressed the Machinability Test Lathes. These could be extensively instrumented and take a tool force dynamometer, have a recording oscillograph, have sensors for vibrations and displacements of the cutting edge of the tool, etc.

This was similar to the Mona-Matic lathes but much of the instrumentation could be utilized on a 10 EE.

The back page listed 30 U.S. distributors, five U.S. branch offices, six Canadian distributors, and 42 other distributors outside the U.S. or Canada, including Habana, Cuba.

Peter Miles said:

Very interesting was the Ultra-Precision Contouring Lath, Series 180. "It was developed specifically for ultra-precision machining of thin-wall spherical and related shape work pieces, contouring O.D. and I.D. with a total accumulated error of plus or minus 75 millionths of an inch, or less."

The machine drive was isolated from the lathe bed and flexibly coupled to the spindle.

"The spindle bearing lubricant is refrigerated, the floor mounted tracer hydraulic tank is separetely colled and coolant temperature is controlled within + or - 0.5 degrees."

Spindle nose runout less than 0.000025". Total accumulate error from stylus point to tool 0.000020".

"The machine is built and tested in a temperature-controlled area and must be so operated."

Click to expand...

The perfect lathe for making plutonium "pits", more particularly, the "hollow" and "levitated' components thereof.

Some of those mid-1950s designs were way, way at out the edge of what was machinable.

"Swan", circa 1957, was the basis of everything which came thereafter, as it was so very light, perhaps only 150 pounds, and it was "two point safe", meaning if only one of the two ignition points was successfully fired, the result was no nuclear yield at all, while if both ignition points were successfully fired, the result was always a full design yield.

The design and construction of "Swan" is complex because it has so many hollow components, including both spherical components and oblate spheroid (football-shaped) components, too.

Great score! It would be great if you made its content available here, I don't think anything like it has been posted before. Encountered some of these models in shops but have never seen factory literature on them. Photos of factory new machines are always a good source of information and interesting to those of us with a history of technology leaning. Might even remind us of our youth!

It's remarkable how turning precision evolved with our weapons. Without one the other couldn't progress. It's easy to guess which one drove the other.

Way OT but it's termed "one point safe." Primaries evolved from Swan are designed to be initiated to full yield from two points. The goal is no nuclear yield if initiated from a single point. The historical record is fascinating as the desired result took some doing to accomplish.

"Way OT but it's termed "one point safe." Primaries evolved from Swan are designed to be initiated to full yield from two points. The goal is no nuclear yield if initiated from a single point."

Yes, of course, I meant "one point safe".

A "two point safe" design would have no yield under any conditions.


"The historical record is fascinating as the desired result took some doing to accomplish."

This LLNL design is just about the only design which Teller's lab turned out which actually worked. And, it took years to accomplish, during which time LANL primaries were the design of choice, even for thermonuclears, which is what Teller's lab was supposed to be working on.

The "Swan" variants had a spectacular list of failures ... more failures than any other design:

1) one point tests in which the yield was greater than zero, but was still unacceptably high for a submarine-based weapon, and

2) one point tests in which the yield was greater than 300 kT, nearly the full design yield of the weapon, and which was considered a catastrophic failure, and, of course,

3) a few tests in which the yield was indeed zero, and which was considered a complete success.

The goal, apparently, was to compactify the "Swan" device to a more-or-less spherical shape, as all the successful primaries before it had been spherical.

But, "Swan" would only work with high reliability if the length-to diameter ratio was about 2.0.

However, at about 2.0 "Swan" was just about guaranteed to work every time.

Alas, this two point design was so theoretically and practically complex that live testing with active material was an absolute requirement, whereas earlier 32 and 96 point designs could be proved without live testing (i.e., these designs could be proved even if the active material was replaced with inactive material such as U-238).

I guess it could be stated that the 32 and 96 point designs could be "scaled" easily, whereas two point designs could not be "scaled" at all.

But, no matter, as at the end of the day it was determined that the lowest cost device, for any application of any size whatsoever, was a thermonuclear, and the single "Swan" design was good for all of these.

All good and accurate information Peter. It's fascinating how much material has been declassified and it makes for some excellent study. For those with any interest in the history of nuclear weapons I can recommend three books to consider for starters.

"The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes

"Dark Sun" by Richard Rhodes

"US Nuclear Weapons the Secret History" by Chuck Hansen

Thanks, Dave.

Not to belabor the point ... and this IS the point, and certainly was my point ... that these incredibly destructive devices were only made possible by some of the most innovative and constructive work ever to be done in the entire history of machinery design and manufacturing.

Castable high explosive lenses, what we now call shaped charges, were also machined on turning machines of the types described.

Rhodes' books are exceptionally good.

Some of the most recent documents to be declassified occurred only last December. Swan was described in great detail in that most recently declassified materials. And, the drawings from the New York Times article about the W88 warhead, and the Wen Ho Lee fiasco, possibly obtained from prosecutor's pre-trial disclosures, showed Swan, in the abstract, in a thermonuclear configuration.

Swan is, ultimately, the cheapest and best device for the intended application, for a highly advanced nation-state, but it is also the most complex to design, prove, construct, and maintain, and is probably out of reach of a less advanced nation-state (thank God).

Likely, there will never be a follow-on to Swan.

Likely, there will never be a follow-on to those turning machines, either, although some CNC machines might be able to do the job.

While I was a principal engineer with Amdahl Corp, then a designer and manufacturer of the fastest IBM-compatible mainframe computers, our mainframe products were considered "munitions" and export was strictly controlled.

Some of our best customers were the "usual suspects" three-letter agencies. Oh, and our very first customer was a four-letter agency ... NASA.

Several people associated with the program said things like they could make a nuclear device the size of a golf ball. I can't envision one that size. Another statement was that they could make an atomic grenade if they could find someone dumb enough to throw it.

Fact or fantasy?

Bill

FACT:

Shoulder fired tactical nukes were a 1950's reality

9100 said:

Several people associated with the program said things like they could make a nuclear device the size of a golf ball. I can't envision one that size. Another statement was that they could make an atomic grenade if they could find someone dumb enough to throw it.

Fact or fantasy?

Bill

Click to expand...

With Californium-252 you can get to critical mass with a 7cm diameter ball. With a golf ball being 4.28cm diameter I don't anyone is quite there. (I don't *think* you could compress a very subcritical mass far enough with a thin layer of explosives to a high enough neutron cross-sectional density to gain prompt criticality. Maybe with a 100% effective neutron reflector, but that doesn't exist.

As for the grenade you could look at the Davy Crockett launcher with the Mk-54 warhead. A lob of a mile for a yield of 10-20tons (not k-tons). Lethality was more a function of radiation from the blast than blast effects.

I hung around with a fair number of folks involved in the program (heck, I even worked in the first bomb assembly building at Sandia Base after it became Sandia Labs) and I never heard anyone seriously suggest anything like that that would work in design. And there was a fair amount of spitballing in the SCIF.

I feel like this pic could go into this convo, just couldn't tell you where it's from.



The op's original 1st post is based on this brochure:
Monarch Machine Tool Co. - Publication Reprints - Monarch Turning Machines | VintageMachinery.org

The pdf:
http://www.vintagemachinery.org/pubs/2103/19729.pdf

texasgunsmith said:

I feel like this pic could go into this convo, just couldn't tell you where it's from.

View attachment 303957




The op's original 1st post is based on this brochure:
Monarch Machine Tool Co. - Publication Reprints - Monarch Turning Machines | VintageMachinery.org

The pdf:
http://www.vintagemachinery.org/pubs/2103/19729.pdf

Click to expand...

mllud22 said:

I'm guessing but I would think a lot of lathe operators wore lead lined suit's. That would make a 8 hour shift a long day.​

Click to expand...

Mostly glove box work for building. Big glove boxes and waldos for heavy stuff. There might have been "moon suits" but they're not lead lined, just positive vented suits. Remember - they were working with alpha emitters where paper would protect them from the emissions, so really no lead needed.

I saw some of the hot boxes at Sandia and they were impressive, waldo only with extremely thick leaded glass windows.

Disassembly is different, I heard some about it but never saw any of it. As I understand it at that point you're dealing with decay products and their emissions, so more beta and thus Bremsstrahlung photons. Heavier shielding but likely not to the point of lead.

I did a job in a nuclear power plant some years ago. The shop/maintenance/tool building was divided into two sections, A heavy wall and heavy doors separating the two sides. One side you and tooling could come and go as necessary. In the "hot" section, any tool that entered that section could never leave, it had to remain in that section.

As I buy a lot of old tooling, I've had in the back of my head some question, if some might not have 'escaped' such places where controls were not so tight at the time.

I went to the PDF file on post #10 and was looking at the scan. The Mona-Matic Model 20-H is unusual in that the main drive motor is rear mounted at a 90 degree angle! Unless I'm looking at it wrong. Never seen that before.

Mr Bridgeport

Mr Bridgeport said:

I went to the PDF file on post #10 and was looking at the scan. The Mona-Matic Model 20-H is unusual in that the main drive motor is rear mounted at a 90 degree angle! Unless I'm looking at it wrong. Never seen that before.

Mr Bridgeport

Click to expand...

Good eye ! Page 19

I think they did this because there were two pick off gears that were access from the front of the machine to change the speed setting. The only other reason could be for floor space.

John