Gear making in the 60s

[Randy]

Fran Blanche is transfering her collection of 16mm industrial and instructional films to video. Here's one on Fellows gear cutting machines. I wonder how CNC has changed these processes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mWDUFftUcs&ab_channel=FranBlanche

[vectorwarbirds]

Thanks for posting this Randy, I love Fran! Will be great to see what she posts.

[ElectronMini]

Very interesting, just about the time I started to make a living as a machinist in New York.
Maybe as a related subject I developed lately an interest on building a hobbing machine for fun at home.
I came across an Australian Model Magazine with an article on building one and mentioned a list of references like:
Dr. Parks, Giles; describing a lathe attachment.........MEW issue No. 57, page 37.
Also another reference to the ME and CES magazines.
Does anyone have a clue on the full names of these magazines? Most probably Australian issues, but my searches did not produce anything worthwhile.

[TGTool]

ME is Model Engineer magazine and MEW is Model Engineers' Workshop, both from mytimemedia in the UK. MEW is up to issue 307 now, so that was a while back.

I'm not familiar with CES.

[Fasturn]

Nice... very expensive machines in those days. Only gears I ever made was using wire edm, or wired electrodes and plunge edm. Surface finish does not compare to hobbing machines. Thanks!

[Peter.]

ME is Model Engineer magazine and MEW is Model Engineers' Workshop, both from mytimemedia in the UK. MEW is up to issue 307 now, so that was a while back.

I'm not familiar with CES.

CES is College Engineering Supplies

[J Tiers]

Thanks for posting this Randy, I love Fran! Will be great to see what she posts.

Had not run into her stuff before. She seems to be a bit of a hoot.... And depending on what she is talking about, seems to have a good background. Can't decide if that is just being well-read, technical background, or what. Chemical stuff an d physics seem to be areas of knowledge.

[Edwin Dirnbeck]

What a beautiful film about a USA company on top of the world. The shot of the dual diamonds ,dressing a helical gear profile on the grinding wheel is amazing. What is the sad story of its downfall ? Edwin Dirnbeck

[reggie_obe]

What a beautiful film about a USA company on top of the world. The shot of the dual diamonds ,dressing a helical gear profile on the grinding wheel is amazing. What is the sad story of its downfall ? Edwin Dirnbeck

They live on through Borne and Koch. https://www.bourn-koch.com/new-machi...uring/fellows/
.
For the Fellows Gear Shaper Company, the 1920s was a time of growth and product development,
and the 1940s heralded the design and production of nine new kinds of machines, including in 1947 a
mammoth rotary gear shaper, the 80,000 pound ten-spindle gear shaper. In 1977 Fellows introduced its
new series of Hydrostroke machines and in the early 1980s introduced computer numerical control (CNC)
machines.
In 1970, the company changed its name to Fellows Corporation. Four years later, Fellows was acquired
by the Emhart Corporation and in 1987 Fellows was acquired by Goldman Industrial Group. Goldman filed
for bankruptcy in February 2002. In July 2002, Bourn & Koch, Inc., of Rockford, Illinois, and Star-SU, Inc.
of Hoffman Estates, Illinois, acquired the gear shaper machine tool manufacturing assets and the gear
shaper cutting tool manufacturing assets respectively

Probably more info to be gleaned in the Antique Machinery PM forum. One guy there has several working Fellows Gear Shapers, working for him.

[vectorwarbirds]

Had not run into her stuff before. She seems to be a bit of a hoot.... And depending on what she is talking about, seems to have a good background. Can't decide if that is just being well-read, technical background, or what. Chemical stuff an d physics seem to be areas of knowledge.

She is an electronics engineer, electric guitar sounds device manufacturer and pretty famous with the Frantone effects pedals. More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frantone_Electronics

[vectorwarbirds]

Also good to see Fellows gear making machines are still be made today, pretty rare.

[J Tiers]

She is an electronics engineer, electric guitar sounds device manufacturer and pretty famous with the Frantone effects pedals. More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frantone_Electronics

Well, so am I, and I worked in the music biz designing amps, mixers, PA amps, etc. Even some effects stuff. Watched the two vids on the frequency meter, and am the opposite of impressed. The "impedance explanation" about not driving it with an amplifier was way off base. But then, I am an amplifier engineer, and not primarily an effects designer, so I have a different understanding of things.

Interestingly, some of the best and most interesting effects have been designed by folks who did not know a lot. Not knowing too much is a benefit, because you don't know "it won't work", which frees you to make it work.

After the idea, though, it's helpful to flip back to knowing things, like how to make it reliable and consistent.

Anyhow, electronics engineer or not, bad technical info in that one at least... It could have worked fine, at least for relatively small frequency changes.

[vectorwarbirds]

What a beautiful film about a USA company on top of the world. The shot of the dual diamonds ,dressing a helical gear profile on the grinding wheel is amazing. What is the sad story of its downfall ? Edwin Dirnbeck

From my research its the same story, American or British, motorcycles or machine tools, they did not embrace, envision and invest in the future fast enough to keep up with other companies that did. This seems to be the trend when the founders of these firms die off and their vision dies with them.

[tom_d]

Fran Blanche is transfering her collection of 16mm industrial and instructional films to video. Here's one on Fellows gear cutting machines. I wonder how CNC has changed these processes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mWD...el=FranBlanche

Easily burn up an afternoon+ going down that rabbit hole. 😀

[BCRider]

A good and highly entertaining video for any machinehead. Looking down her list of videos I see a few others that I'll be watching over the next week or two. Certainly earned a Subscription from me in return for her efforts.