Munro’s Planing Machine to Be Attached to the Lathe, and Worked With the Foot
In the English Mechanic of Nov. 2, 1866, a brief notice was given of the above. The author of the present work having carefully inspected the machine and seen it in operation, considers it of such great value to the amateur mechanic, as well as to the professional turner of metal work, that he has had an engraving of the machine carefully made from a photograph, and has here appended it to illustrate the description given.
It is a lathe for planing, cutting key-grooves in wheels, collars, &c., and cutting racks on the teeth of wheels. The lathe is of the usual construction, but outside the right hand standard is fixed a vertical spindle, which is made to rotate by a pair of bevel wheels, the pinion being fast to the end of the crank shaft, and in contact with a wheel of double the number of teeth on the vertical spindle. On the top of the latter is a crank-plate, which will give a stroke of ten inches or less at pleasure. The planing-machine is fixed by two bolts to the lathe-bed, and a connecting rod is attached to the sliding plate or bed of the planing machine, the other end of which is made fast to the pin of the crank-plate. The work is clamped by simple means to this sliding bed, and thus passes to and fro under the tool which, by self-acting gear, is made to traverse sideways after each stroke as in the large planing machines. The whole works almost noiselessly and with the greatest ease, each part being accurately fitted, and the whole well finished. For such purposes as planing the face of the slide valve and its bed in small engines, or shaping the guide bars of eccentric and other chucks, facing the frames of slide-rests, &c., it is exactly what is needed by the amateur, rendering the workshop complete for all purposes without the necessity for adding a large and separate planing machine, which takes up room that cannot always be conveniently spared. With such a lathe as that in the frontispiece, fitted with one of these planing machines, there is scarcely a model of machinery that could not be made. Any of our readers interested in mechanics would be wise to trip over to Lambeth and view the machine in operation; and the writer will guarantee, not only the most civil and obliging attention from the inventor, but the greatest pleasure and satisfaction from the working of the machine itself. There is a simple arrangement for key-grooving and slotting, by attaching the upper slide of the ordinary rest to the crank plate of this machine, in which case most of the apparatus is removed.