Variable speed drill press - Old style

Was wandering through a well known Adelaide landmark this morning and spotted this drill press
Attachment 296902 Attachment 296903
At first I thought that the crank at the top was for feed but then I realised that it was for variable speed. A rubber tyre runs on the disc and depending on the position delivers from close to zero rpm up to around twice the motor rpm in both forward and reverse. I think the base had Macson cast into it but I'm not sure. An OH&S nightmare these days but none of this fancy VFD crap. The washing machine motor looks like a later addition so I wonder if it was even line shaft driven at one stage (brackets on the side for a back gear?).

I may be going back there soon on a mission for Ewan, so sing out if anyone wants more details.

Michael

Somewhere in amongst my boxes of bits i have a similar drive unit that was taken from an edge bander. It was used to control the speed of the conveyor. from memory the best it could do was 1:1, right down to super slow speeds.

Ew

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Originally Posted by Michael G

Was wandering through a well known Adelaide landmark this morning and spotted this drill press
Attachment 296902 Attachment 296903
At first I thought that the crank at the top was for feed but then I realised that it was for variable speed. A rubber tyre runs on the disc and depending on the position delivers from close to zero rpm up to around twice the motor rpm in both forward and reverse. I think the base had Macson cast into it but I'm not sure. An OH&S nightmare these days but none of this fancy VFD crap. The washing machine motor looks like a later addition so I wonder if it was even line shaft driven at one stage (brackets on the side for a back gear?).

I may be going back there soon on a mission for Ewan, so sing out if anyone wants more details.

Michael

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Intrusting. I used to have a ride on mower that had a drive for the wheels like that. It had friction material instead of rubber. If you went past the centre it went in reverse.

Dean

Some Vintage motor vehicles used this system, and yes it could also provide reverse.
It's frightfully inefficient, but a cheap and easy way to get continuously variable transmission.
A friend had a Ner-a-car motorcyle with this method, so I was able to check it out closely.

Jordan

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Originally Posted by Oldneweng

Intrusting. I used to have a ride on mower that had a drive for the wheels like that.

Dean

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Originally Posted by nadroj

Some Vintage motor vehicles used this system,

Jordan

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I told you my ride on mower was old.
Same type of drive :oo:

Phil

I've seen pictures of two similar drives on old drills, one was conical and one was spherical. I think the latter was Canadian but don't quote me. Pretty cool I thought. One of the US forums it was, either HSM or PM Antiques.

Phil is your mower a Cox?

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Originally Posted by Bryan

I've seen pictures of two similar drives on old drills, one was conical and one was spherical. I think the latter was Canadian but don't quote me. Pretty cool I thought. One of the US forums it was, either HSM or PM Antiques.

Phil is your mower a Cox?

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Hi Bryan,
the dearly departed is an Ariens RM1030.

Phil

The bit missing off the side of the pulley is the belt changer, It should have two flat belt pulleys (an idler and a drive).

I just posted a very similar one
https://www.woodworkforums.com/showth...41#post1821341

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Originally Posted by nadroj

Some Vintage motor vehicles used this system, and yes it could also provide reverse.
It's frightfully inefficient, but a cheap and easy way to get continuously variable transmission.
A friend had a Ner-a-car motorcyle with this method, so I was able to check it out closely.

Jordan

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Here's a photo of the transmission on a GWK cycle car. These were made from pre WW1 until the early twenties. The wheel at the top of the photo is the engine flywheel. The friction wheel is surfaced with "compressed paper" and the friction surface was replaced every 5000 miles as part of normal maintenance, not a major job according to contemporary reports. The transmission was said to be fairly trouble free if driven sensibly. You can see the shifting fork for the friction wheel in the left side of the friction wheel in the photo. The transmission is in neutral in the photo. Shifting the disc to the left of centre gave reverse, and to the right gave the forward speeds.

Photo was taken by Asquith who for a while contributed many interesting old machinery threads to the PM forum.

Frank

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Originally Posted by franco

Here's a photo of the transmission on a GWK cycle car. These were made from pre WW1 until the early twenties. The wheel at the top of the photo is the engine flywheel. The friction wheel is surfaced with "compressed paper" and was replaced every 5000 miles as part of normal maintenance, not a major job according to contemporary reports. The transmission was said to be fairly trouble free if driven sensibly. You can see the shifting fork for the friction wheel in the left side of the friction wheel in the photo. The transmission is in neutral in the photo. Shifting the disc to the left of centre gave reverse, and to the right gave the forward speeds.

Photo was taken by Asquith who for a while contributed many interesting old machinery threads to the PM forum.

Frank

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Same as the transmission in some ride on mowers.

BSR record players has a wheel and disk transmission

There was a rubber disk wheel on the fixed speed motor, that ran on the underside of the platter.

Lenco turntables where similar...but the disk was an intermediate idler between a cone on the motor and the underside of the platter.
The lenco units would vary from 16rpm to 78 rpm continuous.....very much favoured by dance studios in the day.

As far as the rider mowers.....cox and greenfield mowers may have cones.....but the drive system provides no speed variation, except for slipage of the cone clutch.

These various friction clutch systems where pretty common on all sorts of equipment large and small in the time before DC motors, solid state electronics and cheap hydraulics.

There was still a lot of it beeeing sold as late as the 70's.

cheers

We managed for the first couple of years considering the large amount of mowing we need to do, with a Rover Ranger with that style gearing. You could adjust the ratios around to suit. I had reverse pretty slow so when I hit a difficult bit I could do it in reverse and it would go real slow. I fitted a simple blade to the front and used it to level our rainwater tanks site. This wore the driven wheel surface very thin. Still worked for a while until I retired it. The parts were available for replacement but it just did not compare to the more modern version we had acquired.

Dean