Overhead Belt Driven machine tool help thread?!

Diggin all things vintage, I just picked up an overhead belt driven Drill press, not huge but a good size for most smaller parts. I also have a line on a lathe. My "born in the wrong century" self is digging setting em both up in the shop with overhead pullies and belts with one motor running them (no stream or hydro poewer would be rockin )

Thoughts?
Input?
Ideas?

I am visiting a shop in a few days that has a Model A ****** used as a speed selector on a similar press to control the drill speed.

 

Oldgoalie is into all that belt drive stuff.

IIRC,he has at least on belt drive lathe,probably more stuff.

 

Thanks Mr. Hawking!

 

TMan I can see the fingers flyin. Best of luck and wear thick gloves.lol

 

Need to find an old hit-or-miss gas engine now!

 

Naw, Vagabond here, not a Kropduster

 

Thats actually an idea I hadn't thought of! Cool but I dont have a good place for it at teh moment. Looking to run them electric to start off with......we will see.

 

I dismantled a set of overhead belt systems. It was run by an electric motor hung upside down on the ceiling.
You will need a way to engage and disengage your machines. Used to be a long lever that would flip the leather belts from drive sheave to drive sheave.
The belts were spliced together using "lacing kits". They looked like large staples.

 

Seems like you need a Model A 4-banger out behind the shed to power the equipment!
Good luck. I've often thought it would be cool to have an old shop set up with belt-driven tools.
Then I remember I don't have any money, time to find all the stuff, or a shop in the country where I could get away with it! On the plus side, you could also hook up some ceiling fans to run automatically when the engine is running.

-Brad

 

Boy, that brings backs some memories!
The machine shop I apprenticed in had ALL the tools driven by overhead belts!
Drills, lathes, milling machines, a shaper and some I don't remember

The shafts - several of them - were attached to the ceiling joists by ornate brackets.
At each tool were step pulleys on the shaft, and a corresponding one on the the tool, driven with big flat leather belts.

An arm hung down that you could push the belt from one step to another while "on the fly."

At one end of the shop was a BIG DC electric motor - it was left over from the original power company days, that they had converted to AC.

The fun times were when a belt flipped off its pulley, or WORSE when one broke!!
Then you had to "duck for cover" or risk getting tangled up in a pile of leather!!

 

I work at U.S. Repeating Arms in the early 80s where they had the custom gun shop nothing but old turn of the century belt driven machine very impressive. Thanx for the memorys............ good luck and good idea.

 

On A Trip To Ford's Dearborn Village My Wife And Daughter Made Candlesticks Using Old Belt Driven Lathes And Drill Presses Really Neat Experience

 

All those replies make me grin with happiness!

 

Those ****ty staples holding the belts together are a pain in the ***.

 

Are you running a museum or a shop? Replace that outdated **** with an electric motor and save the belts for the smithsonian.

 

I once ran a lathe that had been overhead belt driven. the owner mounted an electric motor on the floor next to the lathe and ran a belt up to a Dodge floor shift transmission. The top stick was bent around and down and that was how you slected speeds. Worked OK.

 

Here are a couple of pics of the old Winchester Machines. It would be nice to have a shop/museum. Good luck.

 

Years ago I went to an Estate Auction in an old San Antonio neighborhood. The fellow who lived there had a full machine shop in the back yard driven by a big electric motor and over head pulleys and belts. It was an amazing setup for an eccentric old guy who got an Automotive Engineering Degree in 1910 or so. His final exam was, naturally, to build a car. It was there for sale, a converted buckboard with a single cylinder air-cooled engine driving a fan by a twisted flat belt and using a cone-style clutch and tiller steering.
My best purchase there? For $5 I got a 1943 War Bonds Poster issued by the 7-UP Company showing a lovely American beauty with rosy cheeks and ruby lips leaning on a white picket fence with a child's pulltoy(a duck) in one hand and a garden trowel in the other gloved hand. The "Buy War Bonds" seal is in the beautiful blue sky behind her under the caption "For All We Hold Dear".

 

Thats a very ignorant quote......how do you think all that old ford goodness was made? With CNCs? Besides, the steel has no idea what kinda machine is spinning the bit!

Unk, this one is newer than the leather belt style pully, industrial V belt instead.

 

I picked up this lathe a few months ago
1915'ish Monarch converted to electric

 

Very cool paul, I cant wait to go see if this one is still for sale!

 

Some criss crossed leather belts slapping and flying through the air. Love it!

Another power plant option is a 2 stroke Maytag engine. They use to power the washers. They are designed to be kept and run inside. They have a long flex pipe that exisits a window so you can get the exhaust fumes outside.

They also have a neat foot pedal kick start. Just another option. They are plentiful and still affordable when compared to hit & miss engines. They also a boxer style 2 cylinder model that is cool!

Good luck. I like your thinking.

 

My uncle had a machine/blacksmith shop when I was a kid. He had all the machines driven by the overhead shaft with leather belts. He could turn out some amazing work with those old machines. He was a REAL machanist not a 'machine operator'. He had a carbide generator that he used to make acetylene. I got him to gas weld the aluminum primary for my Harley back together after I crashed it. Now thats a trick.

 

You are in a fairly rural area. Grainerys might be a source of shafts and flat pulleys. I'm not talking about full blown elevators here although that might be a source as well. I'm talking about the grain storage buildings lots of farms used to have. Since most of them were built in the day they had a long shaft and pulleys on the second floor to drive stuff. I know the one on the farm I grew up on had it.

My old American lathe has a flat belt drive. Cool stuff.

 

Lame. Replace that outdated old hot rod with a Camry.

 

I replaced the stapled belt on my 1934 South Bend with a (non-traditional) serpinetine belt. Eventually I will have a glued leather belt.


P.S. The cool guys built their shop next to a running river and powered the machines with a water wheel.

Cool machinist site:
http://www.practicalmachinist.com/c...orum;f=17;hardset=0;start_point=0;DaysPrune=0

 

good luck keeping limbs with the belt setup. i used to live across the street from an old brickworks- that place was crazy, belt driven brick shapers. moulds, escalators for mix and pressed bricks to kiln- wild to explore, must of been even wilder to work in

 

Holy smokes Paul! I learned on one of those!!

The amazing part about the old machinery, is how well it was made, and has stood up to regular use for all these years.
As long as you kept things lubricated, they seem to last for ever!

The Monarch I worked - apprenticed - on; was beginning to show signs of wear on the bed ways just in front of the headstock. He had bought it used years before.
(it was used DAILY!)

The old guy I apprenticed under, just removed the whole head stock from the bed and turned the bed 180 deg. Made some changes to the lead screw mounting and a couple of other changes. (hey, this WAS a machine shop!!)
Fresh bed ways!

99% of the work done on that lathe, was done within the first 12" of the headstock.

 

Yea, better not build anything dangerous like a 400+ horse 1800 pound HOT RAWD!

We are simply talking about a small drill press and lathe run off a common motor, not a whole freakin factory circa 1900

 

Yep... some people just don't get it. I'm voting for windpower... You got wind up there right?