Vertical Plate Bending Rolls

From Thomas Hudson and Company’s Sheepford Boiler Works, Coatbridge.

Known as ‘pinch rolls’, these powerful rollers were used to shape the plates used to make boilers.

The forward roller could be lifted vertically by a crane and then shifted backwards in stages to increase the curvature of the boiler plate as it was slowly rolled back and forth between the rollers.

© Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland.

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You can see in the photograph the overhead line shaft that drove the rolls via a thick belt drive. By the time this photo was taken the machine was no longer in use.