Thread: Anyone know what this is?

Looks like an old ice cream cone rolling mill to me!

Sinkers. Really big sinkers

Rock crusher

Originally Posted by DavidG

Rock crusher

I'd go along with that.

Rock crushers are usually gravity fed, so the drums are mounted horizontally. Any system to feed rocks through that would be messy. Then again, I understand there were plenty of unemployed chinese on the goldfields?

Any hint as to size? There's nothing there to compare it against to allow for a good guess.

Is it smallish, as in Great-Aunt Mabel's mangle? Or larger, as in Leo the Lopper's log pulper?

Pattern is too intricate for a rock crusher. Fixed distance between the rollers.... my guess is some sort of pattern stamper that imprints both sides of the feed material.

Steve

Originally Posted by Stopper

Pattern is too intricate for a rock crusher. Fixed distance between the rollers.... my guess is some sort of pattern stamper that imprints both sides of the feed material.

Steve

I agree. But what?

I recon it is some sort of moulding press for making teardrop thingys.

I can see three posibilities

pastry

clay

or I thik most probable

glass.

cheers

not glass.... surely that would be poured into moulds?

As I see the photo, both rollers have a 'hollow' pattern?
If it were for deforming sheet metal, it would have a hollow pattern on one roller and a raised pattern on the other... to me that rules out textured pattern rolling (as in pressed metal ceilings).

I'm intrigued... where is the pub, and it the device local?
I'd say that Soundmans 'clay' might be the right track... but it is hard to tell the size... more details please!
What is the gearing... the gear on the right... how big is it? It seems to be up on a bar, with a VB beer mat runner behind it? 50 cm wide?
Maybe it is for shaping and cutting lead from fairly thick sheets?

Not fair,need more info

Could it be for compressing and moulding brown coal brickets?

Seems to be a pattern inside the pointy part of the tear drop shapes on the rollers .
Looks to be very heavy duty piece of gear.

Certainly a curiosty , some idea of where he found it or the location where it was found might help to identify its purpose.

Might be a feed roller for some other piece of machinery ,but the pattern throws that theory around a bit.

Kev.

What is the knob on top attached to? Height adjustment of the top roller?
I'm looking around that large driven gear and there does not seem to be cowling left over from a gearbox that has been removed so maybe the motor sprocket engaged here directly and the machine actually ran at a reasonably high speed. If the material being processed was very soft I think they would have used a pulley and not gears to drive it.

The heavy construction and the gears indicate to me that whatever is going through there is under tremendous pressure, with a decent sized motor running it.

It got me thinking about hot rivets but surely they are forged from bar not plate.

Ever wonder how often someone's experimental machine gets dug up, it never worked but 100 years later we stand around scratching our heads....

Well, didn't really expect to get this much interest.
For scale, the machine is sitting upon a dry bar approx. 700mm wide. Not sure what the width of the VB bar runner is.
Oh, and for the mentally challenged, the guy on the right hand side of the photo is only 2 inches tall.

Sugarcane ?