> >>>The south bend at my buddy's shop ("sunday" lathe) is powered by a
>leather
>> belt adapted to an idler shaft, adapted to a V belt!<<<
>
>Fred Dibnah's shop is leather belts and steam boiler power...
>
I don't know when South Bend Lathe stopped selling machines meant to
be driven by an external power source, rather than an electric motor
attached to the machine, but it was sometime after WWII. Motive
power (whether from steam, water, or hamsters in a wheel) was very,
very expensive, so it made lots of sense to have many machines driven
by one engine. A dozen horsepower will run a dozen or three machines
in typical use, with all the power (or a big fraction, belts only can
transmit so much power) available to any one machine for special
purposes. Even today, when electric motors are cheap, sizing
machines to do something you might want to do once a year would cost
a fortune.
_______________________________________________
LRO mailing list
LRO@land-rover.team.net
http://land-rover.team.net/mailman/listinfo/lro
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Apr 05 2003 - 01:22:53 EST