Thread: Australian machine tool history

Others included a complex
shell-forging machine; a lathe of 36-inch centre by 100-foot bed, costing
£55,000—the largest ever made in Australia ; lathes with 36- and 48-inc h
centre and 50 feet between. The first of these was completed at the Ipswic h
Railway Workshops (Queensland) with the aid of ninety firms from nearly
every State of the Commonwealth. It weighed 132 tons and required eight
large railway trucks to transport it to Victoria .
An equally impressive machine was a planer, 12 feet high by 8 feet
by 22 feet, designed by Merrett himself. Twenty-five firms in four different
States collaborated to construct it . It was large enough to take the whole
bed plate of a cargo ship engine, and capable of doing all the planing—
lengthwise and crosswise—in one setting. The horizontal boring machines
made, with 72-inch boring spindle, were as large as those made anywher e
else in the world. Some of the above machines were built with remarkabl e
speed. A steam, hydraulic, 2,000-ton forging press weighing 80 tons was
built and in operation fourteen weeks after its construction was begun .
Eight to twelve months would have been a reasonable period to buil d
this machine in time of peace .

Also interesting but not often thought of, was the development and manufacture of Tungsten Carbide and other cutting materials...

I think I recall something about a 100ft bed lathe that was located in a museum. It may have been a Queensland railway museum. A previous thread I think it was.

Dean

You guys really should go to the Cockatoo Island dockyard historic site. There's still a lot of very big machinery there including a fixed bed planer.

I posted a pile of pix on the PM antiques forum a couple years ago.

PDW

Why did all these have to stop? Imagine we are still doing it today how advance would it be?

Thanks for the link.

Originally Posted by Oldneweng

I think I recall something about a 100ft bed lathe that was located in a museum. It may have been a Queensland railway museum. A previous thread I think it was.

Dean

The one at Ipswich I think is a smaller one...

I am pretty sure there is a long bed lathe at ADI Bendigo... something like 100ft bed would have been for boring out cannon barrels....

Interesting I only flicked through it I will read it properly later. When I worked at AIS Port Kembla in the late seventies in the Number 1 Machine Shop there was a Ford Horizontal Borer with the Ford logo on it I presume this was of wartime manufacture there were also a couple of AIS lathes that were made onsite one was converted for deep hole drilling.I am not sure what else was in the older machine shop someone else might remember.
Will

I was told by a work colleague the lathe in the machine shop at Garden Is Sydney was 120 foot long to machine the prop shafts in the Vampire & Vendetta class destroyers.
Also that it was shortened when the class was mothballed.

JohnQ

Originally Posted by .RC.

The one at Ipswich I think is a smaller one...

I am pretty sure there is a long bed lathe at ADI Bendigo... something like 100ft bed would have been for boring out cannon barrels....

The 100' VDF lathe we had in the Heavy Machine (No.10) shop was mainly used for Propellor shafts we made under the Australian Industry involvement programs for FFG, Anzacs, Huron Minehunters and Collins class submarines etc. Gun barrel machining and rifling was done on smaller machines in the General Machine (No.9) shop. The Heavy Machine shop along with the VDF lathe, 9m and 7m Scheiss boring machines etc was sold to the WA mining Engineering support company Hofmanns several years ago. It's good to see the machines are still working and I believe the company is doing well. The rest of the factory remains under the French company, Thales, manufacturing the very successful Bushmaster troop carrier for the ADF. We also had a very large Ipswich lathe there when I started 42 yrs ago. Been retired 2 yrs now. Peter

Originally Posted by prk

The 100' VDF lathe we had in the Heavy Machine (No.10) shop was mainly used for Propellor shafts we made under the Australian Industry involvement programs for FFG, Anzacs, Huron Minehunters and Collins class submarines etc. Gun barrel machining and rifling was done on smaller machines in the General Machine (No.9) shop. The Heavy Machine shop along with the VDF lathe, 9m and 7m Scheiss boring machines etc was sold to the WA mining company Hofmanns several years ago. It's good to see the machines are still working and I believe the company is doing well. The rest of the factory remains under the French company, Thales, manufacturing the very successful Bushmaster troop carrier for the ADF. We also had a very large Ipswich lathe there when I started 42 yrs ago. Been retired 2 yrs now. Peter

They must have had a thing for VDF lathes... A friend carted two large VDF lathes out of there for a dealer..

Pretty sure this is one of the two Welcome to ESP Machinery

Originally Posted by .RC.

They must have had a thing for VDF lathes... A friend carted two large VDF lathes out of there for a dealer..

Pretty sure this is one of the two Welcome to ESP Machinery

Sadly the big VDF Gun Barrel lathes at Bendigo and Maribrynong (Ordnance ->ADI->Thales) have been disposed of along with the capability, although some of the skilled tradesmen are now putting wheels on military vehicles.....
OFB was built in 1942 in response to the fears shown in the original post. Some of the planned work dictated the size of the Heavy machine shop where rifled sleeves were replaced (shrunk) into existing Naval barrels as they wore. See attached pic of the 8" wire wound barrel and the Heat treatment section (circa 1943) where the barrel is being loaded into the 40' vertical furnace.
For those interested in barrel manufacture, the wire was about 1/8” square and up to 8 miles of it was wound on in layers to contain the huge pressures. Better than the original rope wound hoops on wooden Chinese barrels.
The 105mm Leopard tank barrels we made were hydraulically “Auto Frettaged” to create the same effect of “self hooping” by exceeding the elastic limit in the bore but not the OD. The 105mm Hamel barrels we made were swage auto frettaged at OFM using an oversized Tungsten Carbide slug pushed through the bore before rifling and machining at Bendigo.
One of the larger machines was an Innocenti Horizontal borer which can be seen in the attached pic of the foundations and machining a Ball mill half section. Other shots show the FFG Prop shaft made on the big lathe and machining a blade.OFB_8in Barrel 1.jpgBarrel into furnace.jpg1989 Inno hole.jpgOFB_Innocenti Floor Borer.jpgOFB_FFG Rev Pitch Prop.jpgOFB_FFG prop blade.jpg

This may be the lathe mentioned in the text I pasted ?

Amta Ward Production Lathe in Melbourne, VIC | eBay

Originally Posted by prk

Sadly the big VDF Gun Barrel lathes at Bendigo and Maribrynong (Ordnance ->ADI->Thales) have been disposed of along with the capability, although some of the skilled tradesmen are now putting wheels on military vehicles.....
OFB was built in 1942 in response to the fears shown in the original post. Some of the planned work dictated the size of the Heavy machine shop where rifled sleeves were replaced (shrunk) into existing Naval barrels as they wore. See attached pic of the 8" wire wound barrel and the Heat treatment section (circa 1943) where the barrel is being loaded into the 40' vertical furnace.
For those interested in barrel manufacture, the wire was about 1/8” square and up to 8 miles of it was wound on in layers to contain the huge pressures. Better than the original rope wound hoops on wooden Chinese barrels.
The 105mm Leopard tank barrels we made were hydraulically “Auto Frettaged” to create the same effect of “self hooping” by exceeding the elastic limit in the bore but not the OD. The 105mm Hamel barrels we made were swage auto frettaged at OFM using an oversized Tungsten Carbide slug pushed through the bore before rifling and machining at Bendigo.
One of the larger machines was an Innocenti Horizontal borer which can be seen in the attached pic of the foundations and machining a Ball mill half section. Other shots show the FFG Prop shaft made on the big lathe and machining a blade.

Thanks for the pictures and descriptions, most interesting...

I would say the prop is a bit bigger then you see on the average tinny...

Google gave me this when searching for something...

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/61775635

5th December 1942

AUSTRALIA'S LARGEST LATHE
The largest and most elaborate machine tool to be made in Australia, a 38 Inch centre lathe to facilitate the machining of large components re
quired for ship engines, has }ust been completed In a Queensland workshop. The completion of this lathe, which has a distance of 50 feet between centres, marks Queensland as Ihe first State in the Commonwealth to assemble a machine tool of a size and type not previously undertaken by the engineering trade In this country. Over 90 separate contractors from States of the Commonwealth supplied the parts, ranging from small lubrication fittings to a 23-ton casting. This called for close co-ordinating and co-operation between all concerned. Altogether four lathes will be assembled in Queensland, and it is expected the second will be completed early In the new year. Though the design was taken from the British Craven lathe, the completed tool is larger. Its bed is In three sections, each 22 feet long by eight feet wide, and weighing 23 tons. The total weight of the finished lathe is 130 tons. The final tests received favourable comment from southern experts who watched them. Because of the man power shortage, about 75 per cent diluted labour was used on the manufacture of the lathe.