I picked this up at the same auction as the Lodge & Shipley garden tractor. It is a Swiss made gear cutter used by Bulova Watch Co. It is 20" long for an idea of size, and very heavy. Lots of adjustments, cams and ratchety thingamabobs on it.
YATG (yet another tool gloat)
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Wow, now that is worthy of tool gloat!
It looks like it takes a standard hob? Did you get all the change gears for it?
That's got to be an incredible handy thing to have around the shop, for all those gears you end up making for model engines."Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did."
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What you see is what I got, no gears or cutters. It is marked Brevet with a cross, hence the Swiss manufacture guess. It has a Bulova inventory tag on it.
It was supposedly used for cutting pinions, but is adjustable for larger OD gears. It appears to use involute cutters rather than hobs, I cant tell for sure. The large index at the left of the second photo appears to be the master index for stepping the blank for passes of the cutter. The business in the center with the oil cups is on a slide that moves the cutter spindle fore and aft.Jim H.
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Nibbling away
Jim,
I can't speak for that machine, but I can tell you that when I was in the gear-making section the cutters were as you surmise, of involute form. The machine was a gear shaper. The cutting edges were involute. The cutter was in fact a gear-shape which was oscillated back and forth while the cutter and the work rotated as if they were in mesh as were the spindles on which they were mounted. The cutter cut on the down-stroke and was withdrawn to clear on the back/up stroke as are some clapper boxes on some shapers, slotters and planers etc. They did an excellent job.
Another machine for cutting bevel gears was similar to your machine in that the cutter (shaper) moved in the horizontal plane. The cutter cross-section was similar to the edges of an old draftsman's double-sided scale rule. The involute form and the taper were achieved by "rolling" the "diametral cones" together. It was very clever. We also had the hobbing machines for gears and worm-wheels etc. We did not have a gear grinder of a lapping machine as those jobs were "sent out".
I hope you get that machine going and post the works in progress as you go.
Nice catch.
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Jon Bohlander
My PM Blog
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From his Ad description (I'm not going to post the Ebay link directly):
This item is gear cutting machine made in Switzerland, used by Bulova Watch Company. It is marked Brevet and has a Bulova machine inventory tag. It is for cutting watch gears and pinions. It uses involute type cutters. It is small, 20" long x 13" wide X 16" high, no drive motor. It appears to be pretty much complete and in workable condition but I cannot guarantee as I have no experience with these machines. Due to it's weight, it is available for local pickup only, no shipping. I can assist with loading or delivery within reasonable distance."Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did."
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A fellow here got one similar from ebay (I think) and was planning to make R/C gears with it. It was a military surplus machine and it looked brand new. I remember seeing the ebay auction and they had 5-6 for sale. They were made for making gears for the clockwork inside bombs. The story was something similar to; a part had to be destroyed so that it could be decommissioned. They cut a belt and took the drive pulley off. Otherwise it was perfect and could be easily fixed to make parts. Not an exact match to yours but close.
Anyway - I lost the link and I cant remember who had it. I will however say this, I hope you didn't come to Columbus to get that, I'll be ticked that I missed the auction.
Nice find. Good luck with getting it running.
rock~Last edited by rockrat; 07-18-2009, 10:35 PM.Civil engineers build targets, Mechanical engineers build weapons.
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