Gear Hobbing Machine

This American machine is designed to cut the teeth of gear wheels.

The cutting tool that you can see is called a ‘hob’. The gear wheel into which the teeth are to be cut is fitted onto the spindle in the middle of the turntable in front of the hob.

The machine was used in the Coatbridge works of Anderson Brothers from the 1930s. One of the engineers there, Jimmy Houston, used this machine to build the miniature traction engine ‘Tigger’ which is now at Summerlee

This illustration from an engineering manual shows a similar machine cutting the teeth of a bevelled gear wheel. You can see that the hob of the machine is angled to match the angle of the teeth it is cutting.

Portable Drilling Machine

This drill was one of two large portable drills used in the Coatbank Engine Works of Murray and Paterson.

These very versatile drills could be lifted by an overhead crane inside the factory and moved to where they were needed. This was very useful because sometimes it was not possible to transport the thing being built to one of the larger fixed drilling machines.



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Licensor www.scran.ac.uk

This drill was made in the 1960s to replace a very similar model by the same maker, Asquith which by then had been taken over by the Staveley Machine Tool Company.

Here you can see the two mobile drills inside the works. Murray and Paterson were one of the biggest engineering firms in Coatbridge. They made machinery for the iron and steel industries and also built rudders for ships.