OK, machinsts, what kind of a machine is this?

[Pistolero]

I saw an article about Israelis capturing a weapons factory and they had a picture of this machine.
Clearly some sort of a complex machine -- perhaps feeding rod from inside the long tube on the left
and doing something with it. Screw machine? Seems like a gearbox on near end, several parallel
shafts going back into the main body. Then the V-shaped jaws on top, with a bar sticking out a bit.
I have never seen anything like it and nothing comes to mind.

I figured somebody here would know what it is. Just a weird old machine, and curious what it is.

Bill

 

[RBHarter]

At first glance I'd have suggested a pipe threading machine .
It looks like it has a tape or wire spool or feed wheel . Maybe a winding machine ?

 

[KeithB]

I will offer my opinion, and freely acknowledge I could be totally wrong, but here goes...

I think it is a mechanically semi - programmable screw machine, perhaps of the Swiss chucker type. (A Swiss chucker moves a precision sized rod back and forth to generate cuts in the long axis. The bar is supported by a close fitting bushing on the OD.) There appears to be two tool holders at the top of the machine that form an angle and point to the center of the rod's axis of rotation. There also appears to be one on the left side oriented horizontally, and it wouldn't surprise me find out there was one on the other side. On the left is a bar/rod feeder, and it's longer than it appears since it disappears behind a wall. With four tools you can make a lot of turned screw machine products.

Could be a pipe threading machine but the size of pipe it could use would be pretty small. Could be a spring winding machine but I don't see any place to mount wire feeders. I can't explain the wheel on the left side unless it is for a flat belt drive.

I think the soldier is standing at the back, not front, of the machine.

 

[RicinYakima]

I think it is a coil spring winder. FWIW

 

[smokeywolf]

I like spring winder, but it looks just too complex for that.
Screw Machine? We had a manual spring winder in the MGM shop for doing ones and twos. For more we set them up on a lathe.
I'm betting Keith knows more about screw machines than I.

 

[Pistolero]

apparently something that they were using to make "weapons'..... which could be anything from a rifle to
a mortar round, so doesn't seem to me to narrow the possibilities at all.

OK, I thought somebody would jump in and say "Oh, that is a 1950s vintage #4 Suberswchammic . I used
to run one back in the day."

May still happen.

Bill

 

[Brad]

To me it is the same as you get when crossing and elephant and a rhino.

 

[Pistolero]

Hmmm. Rhinephant or eleino?

Bill

 

[Brad]

Elephino?

 

[KeithB]

Elephino, eh Brad? I'll stick with guessing that it is some type of small turning machine used to make something from bars or rods.

 

[Brad]

I will defer to Keith and Smokeywolf. Those two have more knowledge on machine tools in their fingernail clippings than I will ever hope to have.
Figuring that most weapons require some screws and springs either idea is certainly plausible.

 

[KeithB]

The fact that this may have been in a "weapons facility" doesn't necessarily mean it was used to make weapons. It could just be a piece of left over junk that appeared to be useful and that nobody threw out. It doesn't scare me that someone finds some 1940s technology in the weapons lab of an adversarial country. It would scare me a lot more to see a picture of a lab filled with Haas and Hurco CNC machines.

 

[Ian]

My guess is also screw machine. Stock feeds in through the pipe, the large blocks in a vee orientation support the screw dies maybe?

Sorta kinda like this:

 

[freebullet]

It makes parts for land mines but, the details are still classified.

 

[fiver]

it's not for threading pipe it is way too complicated for that operation.
a pipe threader just has a simple 3 way jaw and a tap type affair [with replaceable cutters] for cutting the threads.

 

[smokeywolf]

Although it's obviously a machine tool. I can tell you that machine shops tend to accumulate odds & ends that you would not expect to find in a conventional machine shop. I had a early '60s era Sun Distributor Machine sitting in a corner of the studio machine shop.

 

[RBHarter]

There's nothing there really for scale but in an ammo facility I can see it as tooling for anti tank projectiles .

It sure looks like that screw machine. Older generation of tool but very similar .

I have a pipe threading machine under the porch . A big old Rigid 1/4-2" I think .

 

[Pistolero]

I think the two big tool holder(?) blocks in the Israeli pic and Ian's pic are the giveaways.
They look a LOT similar.

Also, I am pretty sure that the thing on the end is a bearing and gear case to support
multiple parallel shafts and keep them turning. Perhaps multiple driving wheels to spin
the work? In any case, I am liking Ian pic - and other people, of course, and think it is
probably a screw machine. A whole lot of small parts for any intricate machine can be
made on a screw machine.

So, smokeywolf - was that a perk for the employees so they could recurve their distributors before
going out to run on the dry lakes?

Bill

 

[fiver]

without giving too much away.
I learned engine diagnostics on one of the SUN machines.
I can still set points with a dwell meter, or by gapping them, but no one has those anymore either.

 

[Ian]

Give away what? Did you use the SUN tool to calibrate the manual spark advance lever on the steering column?

Wish I still had one of those big roll-around Sun machines, and a VAT-40, you know, the analog one that was actually useful for measuring real inductive current draw before VAT went all digital.