I just did a quick search to check on the status of Fellows. The company was bought by Bourn & Koch, Inc in 2002, and production was moved to Rockford, Illinois. New gear shapers are still being made under the Fellows brand, and Bourn & Koch, Inc also remanufactures older Fellows units, including bringing them under CNC control. The new units look drastically different, but the company does have a remanufactured unit for sale that seems to be of similar vintage to the units in this video.
Bourn and Koch buy many of these old brands and offer EVERY one of their old models as new productions or refurbishment. Another channel recently did a tour of their factory. I think they own 20+ brands at this point.
I worked at a gear shop that still has fellows machines from the 60s and 70s doing daily production day and night. I was a maintenance tech there. They made them to last and fairly easy to maintain.
This for me is fantastic having worked on gears for a time in my engineering career. First as an Apprentice, gear shaping (we had Fellows machines) , hobing and shaving. Then I worked for a tool company in Basingstoke, Hampshire during tye 1970s that made gear hobs and shaving cutters. I worked as an Inspector. Now retired my gear cutting is limited to odd jobs of small spur gears cut in my garage on a bench mill using a dividing head and straight involute form cutters. Most stuff is Mod gears (module, metric) but I can cut DP (imperial) if necessary it's only the maths and cutter that changes. Many thanks Fran, this great stuff for an old Brit bloke 😂😂😂.
Interesting to hear Basingstoke mentioned. I live there so always interested in it's engineering heritage.Thornycroft etc. Recently bought a Elliott 15 Omnispeed lathe (1970s I think) that allegedly came out of the Gaston Marbaix factory in Wella road!
Hi, Les. I was apprenticed from 1968 to W E Sykes at Staines, the company produced various gear cutting machines, hobs and shaper cutters, and some gear checking equipment. Like you, I became an inspector. It galls me that so many British firms disappeared, my company's competitors in the US, Germany, Italy, Japan, etc., are still in business.
are you able to tell me how hobs with helical gash leads are made? ive done some researching and found the eureka form relieving setup but in my head that will not work with helical gashes only with straight gashes. thanks.
This is really interesting. Thanks for posting. Modern gear production has changed quite a bit. First a set of gear punches and dies is machined. There are a couple different methods used to make the punches, grinding, and burning, but burning is mostly used now. A tool steel gear punch is rough turned in a lathe and then heat treated to high hardness. After that, its diameters and ends are ground to size. A female gear form electrode is cut from dense graphite in a wire edm. The punch blank is then setup in a ram edm, and the graphite electrode is forced down over the blank punch while being fed high amperage electricity. The entire setup is submerged in dielectric oil. The electricity erodes, or "burns" as it's called, the gear form into the punch blank as the electrode is fed down over the blank. After the roughing burn, subsequent finishing electrodes burn the form close to size. Afterward, a finisher/polisher removes the rough recast layer on the punch with polishing stones, fits the punches to the die, finishes the sizes, and applies the final micro finish to the gear teeth. After that, gear face details are either burned or hard milled into the face, and the polisher goes to work applying a mirror finish to the face detail. This helps increase tool life, and helps keep parts from sticking to it. The die making is the opposite operation. Once the punch and die set is finished, they are setup in a press. A custom blend of metal powders and lubricant is fed into the die cavity, and the punches press the powder into a "green part" under many tons of pressure, and then eject it with the bottom punch. The press and tooling is adjusted to get the proper sizes and part density before production begins. The green parts are belt fed into a long sintering oven, where high temps fuse the powder together and drive off the lubricant. Depending on the tolerances required, some sintered parts are then loaded into a sizing press, which further shapes them slightly to their finished sizes. Many parts inside modern automotive engines and transmissions are made in this manner, including gears, bearings, bushings, main bearing caps, rockers, and connecting rods. Connecting rods are then forged in a die and cryogenically split after sintering to make exact matching sets. I worked in tool and die for years in powder metal manufacturing. I thought someone might find it interesting.
I love the way it turns into a type of travelog at the end. Very indicative of the era from which it comes. Thank you Fran, these films are priceless in terms of history.
Hey! That's a Fellows #7, I have 4 of then that I use daily in my job; 2 of them make spur gears and one has a rack table fitted. the fourth one makes face gears. even though our machines are 40+ years old they are still surprisingly useful for low volume high turnaround type of work.
When i was an Apprenticein the early 1980's I learned to use Fellows equipment along with myford and Bridgeport lathes, various Bridgeport vertical milling machines , David Brown gear cutters and worm gear hobbing machines. great to see this old film bought back to life . Pity that we can not get back the lost manufacturing jobs that was the life-blood of the UK/USA.
We absolutely can, just start getting into automation. Both big A and small a automation. Robots, fixture pallets, standardized tools. If a small business utilized only small a automation with fixtures and standard tools, they can set up and break down their jobs quickly, run a massive amount of parts per fixture depending on the design, and cycle run time is reduced because of less tool changes during the program.
@@TheDandyMann I could not agree more and that's partly why I work for one of Americas great engineering companies Caterpillar! We have learned to blend small company flexibility with big conglomerate strength.
Wow, small world. My father retired from Fellows, and his brother retired from Bryant Grinder. I'm also related to the Cone family on my mother's side, with Cone Automatic Machine founder Frank Lyman Cone being my great, great grandfather.
I’m getting ready to repair my car at a friends place down the street from the old hydromatic plant near Willow Run airport in Michigan. It’s wild to think that those transmission gear manufacturing lines were in operation decades ago. Fun fact: the supply road laid down during WW2 is still there and in good shape.
The runway is now part of I-94, but the days of GM supplying half the automatic transmissions used in the world are long gone... [ I grew up in Ann Arbor so I know the history and area. I even knew of two couples who met working at Willow Run during the war...]
Amazing film! I lived in Springfield for 25 years and knew many people who worked at Fellows. I spent some time working for a rebuilder of the 6A and No. 7 Gearshapers.
I thought springfield had a nuclear power plant not a gear factory.. Anyway do you know the family „Simpson“ ? It’s a well known family there.. as far as i remember they have their own reality show.
@@ukpkmkk_2 It was a secret nuclear power plant until the reality series outed it. The family lived in my neighborhood. Their jaundice has not improved.
I did my apprenticeship in a company on the south coast of England that made the complete saddle gearboxes for Colchester lathes. I spent 6 months in all departments including the Gear Cutting section and ended up running that section whilst still an apprentice at the age of 19. We had Sykes gear hobbers and shapers, Dowding and Doll hobbers and a Maxicut get shaper. Gear teeth were rounded or chamfered and were then induction hardened on a Raydine heat treating machine in the shop. I was responsible for all the gearcutting and associated operations including horizontal and vertical broaching. So many engineers I have met in my 45 years in the industry know nothing (or very little) about gear manufacture. I would say it's a bit of an art. Interesting video thanks.
This video is awesome, I know that these promotional videos are created to swoon prospective clients and contractors, but the amount of detail in their processes is incredible, and I love how proud were they back then to be licensors of technologies by other companies. Also, loved that small detail about golf and skiing in the end. Keep them coming Fran and thanks for digitizing these little unknown gems! EDIT: It has been mentioned in other comments, but I find it amazing that some of the Fellows machines (some of the more modern ones) are still being sold and some even remanufactured by Bourn & Koch to this day!
Thanks for sharing! I used to live in Springfield. I was trained as a machinist there after I left my job at the local radio station. I applied for a janitor job at one of the shops after an argument with the radio station owner and they put me on a 5-axis VMC making cutter bodies and other complex parts. On one occasion, I visited a small shop in the old Fellows building that was refurbishing gear shapers and got to see some in action. Wonderful machines! These days I'm back at the radio station.
I'm a metal lathe operator, but in the same shop I work is a business that rents out hobs. I have often wondered how exactly they were used, as I sat by their stock-shelf eating lunch; and now I know. Those are seriously impressive machines!
😁 they are! Get yourself certified as a general machinist, I don't regret any moment of it, and honestly the hardest part has always been the lathe, specifically knurling and part off.
My #1 tip on parting off is ensuring the blade is truly perpendicular to the machine axis. A parallel between the blade and chuck face will accomplish that.
And maybe this is common practice, but the way I was taught to do knurling (with a quick change tool post) is to first set the tool post or compound slide a few degrees off, where the angle opens to the feed direction. Then, set the knurling tool height by leaving the post a bit loose, then bringing it up to the workpiece (lathe off), and wiggling it up and down while feeding in until it becoms solid, then lock the toolpost. Now you can back off, start the machine, and form the knurl. Move the carriage so the knurls are mostly off the work, then feed in until firmly engaged, then slowly move the carriage to cover the work. The angle hopefully lets you get it in one pass. More cross-slide pressure and moving back and forth is okay, but don't let the rolls leave the work until you are sure you have the depth you need. Low RPM, lots of oil, and Bob's your uncle. Also, might only be possible to get light knurling on anything harder than mild or free machining steel.
@@DrewskisBrews aye, that is the common in a manual but a CNC is a while diffrent story. And getting the buggers to line up right and get a perfect knurl is a royal pain, especially when you have a O.D. that's just on the edge of what's possible for the avalible knurlers wheels.
I like hearing you expert machinists speaking in a language I don't understand.👍 Things you guys take for granted. As a refrigeration tech for over 30 years I also have a language that is foreign to most, and can only be understood by others in my field, after adequate experience, of course. Knowledge I take for granted. Yours is fascinating to me and much appreciated because it represents a high level of knowledge and skill in a specialized field, of which we can not live without, without giving up so many things we enjoy in day to day life. Are we a dying breed? I hope not. I can say it is nearly impossible to find serious apprentices in my field with any technical training or schooling. I'm not going to live forever! Again, thanks 👍.
Fran, this work is very important for the sake of technology as well as history. Thank you! Sadly, this seemed to have been the last of the great days in Springfield, VT. Those in charge didn't learn from their predecessors that they must continually innovate to stay relevant. That said, there was a 100 good years of innovation in the Fellows Gear Shaping Company.
Wow. This one really strikes home. My dad was a mechanical engineer for Linde (Union Carbide) in the 1950s through the 1980s. From time to time, he would take me to the factory, and the engineering lab, where they had lots of machines for making new and replacement parts for machines they made for steel mill operations. I always loved those trips. Now, practically nothing is made here in the U. S. ☹️ Thanks for this nostalgic trip back in time!
We still make all the movies, songs, planes, guns, 99% of all the stuff in a major supermarket, all the high tech medical equipment, all the High tech machines to make electronic chips, all large scale projects to make power, nuclear, water, coal, gas plants, Lots and lots of Chemicals, we built Saudi Arabia all the machinery to process the oils, and the list goes on we build most of the stuff in the world. and lots construction tools, equipment too.
What fantastic machines. Very smart people designed and engineered these industrial workhorses and they did it without computers. Complex, yet reliable machines made when American manufacturing was still very much at its peak. This is so underappreciated today. Glad to see this film being shown, and in such pristine quality. It's a great look back at a great company in the greatest era of American history.
The evolution of precision machines like this is a good example of bootstrapping: the parts for the the prototypes of these machines must have been made using one generation of older technology, all the way back to production of the first gears using hand tools.
Really great film! The sales pitch for Springfield is pretty fun too. The old boy *wink wink nudge nudge* bit was groan worthy. I wonder if that plant was ever run by East coast mega super villain, Scorpio?
I dearly love these awesome machines and others like them, which perform incredible, accurate and complex functions without being attached to a general purpose computer. What incredible engineering.
great find Fran.."In operation, the involute is generated as the grinding wheel is rotated in harmony with the work" expresses engineer's prose...goes along with Buckaroo Bonzai's synchronized over thruster...sorta.
There is traffic now in Springfield! A friend owns one of the buildings at the Fellows plant and he rebuilds gear shapers and makes gears on order. Usually small production runs or one offs. Fascinating is the history of the Precision Valley and the tools that were made there. Sadly all gone now.
Thank you for sharing these wonderful documents, Fran. What gorgeously analog machines! I've cut simple involute gears on general purpose lathes and milling machines, but these shapers and hobbers are so elegantly specialized.
I worked with those machines for a few years, along with Gleason Bevel generators. Once you had them set up, you could easily make hundreds of gears with no problems, provided you kept the cutters sharp. Thanks for a bit of nostalgia.
I grew up in Springfield, the center of Precision Valley. The town hasn't changed much for looks. Hartness House is still there, country club, the building that had Fellows in it is still there, the bridge, the falls and Mt. Ascutney hasn't eroded away. Now they also hang glide off Ascutney or it's a good day hike. The end of that film brought back memories.
Back in 2006 I took a machine tool hand scraping class in Springfield VT. I even stayed at the Hartness House for a week. Very nice old mansion/hotel. The Hartness House has some interesting amateur built telescopes and observatories on the property and at least one of them is accessible via tunnel from the house. Old man Hartness was quite the amateur astronomer and had plenty of money to spend on his hobby. Anyhow... The hand scraping class I took was hosted by Gear Works Inc. Which is located in one of the old Fellows factory buildings. The person who runs Gear Works was a former field engineer at Fellows before they they were sold off. He also rebuilds Fellow gear shapers and equipment. We got a detailed tour of his facilities and Fellows machines he uses and ones he was rebuilding for customers. Fellows also made a line of tools for inspecting gears, gear cutters, and setup tools. There are several videos on TH-cam on the design and generation of gears.
Awesome movie, both the video and audio quality is excellent. I bet it hasn't been played too many times. It covers an interesting aspect of mechanical engineering too - to someone unintroduced like me, it's all so complicated, but at the same time the basic principle of operation is quite simple. Devil is in the details, like always :).
I ran 6 fellows gear rack cutters for several months just out of college in 2007, I was low man on the totem pole, so I never did setup, but I became pretty familiar with their design. The machines I was running were WW2 war production equipment that had been updated in the 70s to have individual electrical motors instead of the original line shaft power. Thanks for the neat video!
Amazing video, i love these type of instructional videos. British Pathe is a treasure chest of these type of techniques in the uk, covers so many fields!
Gear hoping machines. I’ve seen them run in person. I used cut gears all the time on a horizontal mill with a dividing head. I was a certified tool and die maker for 25 years. Got back into my childhood love of electronics about 20 years ago. I don’t know how I ended up in the machining/CNC programmer trade over electronics. Can’t complain, great pay but my back, hands are paying the price now loading heavy blanks in lathes or up on mill tables and grinders for years. Cool video.
I spent a number of years working for a German-owned company in Virginia using a Fellows 10-4 gear shaper and Pfauter P250 and P400 gear hobbing machines. Tooling was metric and typical tolerances were 0.03mm or less. The gears we made ranged in size from about 25mm to 500mm in diameter.
When I worked at Buick in Flint, Michigan, I would visit the building where they made the transmission parts. I remember seeing Red Ring Shapers cutting gears, but don’t recall any Fellows. I’m sure they had some there. I worked on bevel gear cutters called Revacycles made by Gleason. The gears were for the carriers ( differentials) for the front wheel drive vehicles.
Wow thank you so much for this amazing video, I go up to Springfield every year for a telescope convention and drive by this great buidliing. These hobbers really just are amazing pieces of art and make beautiful gears even to this day.
I love the combination of not just a product showcase, but then a showcase of the beauty of Vermont. Companies were proud of their hometowns. Also, kinda funny how times have changed... In the little aside at the end, the stop, to "admire the scenery *ahem*" would never ever fly in a modern corporate video. But then, it was perfectly normal and acceptable.
I love shit like this ! My curiosity was brought on when I got a job a Hardinge Inc. as a final assembler on Lathes , Mills and Cylindrical Grinders . I loved that job .
I felt compelled to look up the story of company founder Edward R. Fellows, and it's pretty interesting - at least I thought it was. It's definitely worth looking up. The Fellows Gear Shaping Company may be gone - thanks to a series of corporate acquisitions that began in the 70s through the early 2000s - but the Fellows brand and product line continues to live and thrive under the ownership of Bourn & Koch of Rockford, IL, since 2002. Thanks Again for the great film, Fran.
Great video and one of a very few videos I've seen about the Fellows Gear Shaper Companies machines that was founded by my great grandfather's brother Edwin Russell Fellows who died in 1945.
I'm going to say it's not a computer. There's no 'processing of information' - i.e. no decisionmaking. It's just a dumb robot doing repeated operations. If you want analogue computers, look at automatic gearboxes (old style).
@@millomweb I disagree. The interplay between the various gears / cams / levers is almost identical to an IC: the internal workings are fixed, though it’s possible to configure which of the internal workings are engaged to produce dramatically processed outputs.
Longtime lurker never comment but love this video. Sure hope civilization doesn’t have to claw its way through this phase again after a fall. Under appreciated part of the “tech tree”
Isn’t it amazing what was done and made before calculators and computers were in common use. Slide rules and understanding of mechanics and principles. The men and women who designed and made this stuff were of a different caliber than today’s engineers. Pretty amazing stuff.
And to think that all this is done today with computer and CNC machines. Those were the days when machinists knew what they were doing and how to operate mechanical gear making! I wonder if Fellows is the same company that now makes paper shredders and office products? Wonderful video and film. Thanks Fran!
I would love to see the programming mechanism on that. I'm imagining cams, toggles, and relays. 9:34 Every guy's 18th birthday trip to Vegas. (I know I'm going straight to hell for that!)
Love it! Having worked in machining and modern automation, I love seeing the pure mechanical logic of old automation compared to modern computerization!
I worked to sharpen these cutting tools when I was employed at "BRONZES D'INDUSTRIE" in France in 1980, all these machines were scrapped around the year 2000.
My grandfather had an early version of these fellows's gear cutting machines on his shop. (The vertical alternating cutter/shaper version, made on Springfield) I remember the smell of the cutting oil.
„We are know worldwide for our fine gear making machines we licensed from companies in Switzerland and Germany“ Some are salesman, others are engineers. 😎
I just did a quick search to check on the status of Fellows. The company was bought by Bourn & Koch, Inc in 2002, and production was moved to Rockford, Illinois. New gear shapers are still being made under the Fellows brand, and Bourn & Koch, Inc also remanufactures older Fellows units, including bringing them under CNC control. The new units look drastically different, but the company does have a remanufactured unit for sale that seems to be of similar vintage to the units in this video.
Bourn and Koch buy many of these old brands and offer EVERY one of their old models as new productions or refurbishment. Another channel recently did a tour of their factory. I think they own 20+ brands at this point.
I worked at a gear shop that still has fellows machines from the 60s and 70s doing daily production day and night. I was a maintenance tech there. They made them to last and fairly easy to maintain.
@@excitedbox5705 The channel you're thinking of is NYC CNC
@@TheDandyMann yea, I thought so but wasn't sure since I watched a few others lately.
And Springfield died because of the move.
This for me is fantastic having worked on gears for a time in my engineering career. First as an Apprentice, gear shaping (we had Fellows machines) , hobing and shaving. Then I worked for a tool company in Basingstoke, Hampshire during tye 1970s that made gear hobs and shaving cutters. I worked as an Inspector.
Now retired my gear cutting is limited to odd jobs of small spur gears cut in my garage on a bench mill using a dividing head and straight involute form cutters.
Most stuff is Mod gears (module, metric) but I can cut DP (imperial) if necessary it's only the maths and cutter that changes.
Many thanks Fran, this great stuff for an old Brit bloke 😂😂😂.
Interesting to hear Basingstoke mentioned. I live there so always interested in it's engineering heritage.Thornycroft etc. Recently bought a Elliott 15 Omnispeed lathe (1970s I think) that allegedly came out of the Gaston Marbaix factory in Wella road!
Fellows? Did they also make paper shredders? I salvaged some nice gears from a broken Fellows shredder.
Hi, Les. I was apprenticed from 1968 to W E Sykes at Staines, the company produced various gear cutting machines, hobs and shaper cutters, and some gear checking equipment. Like you, I became an inspector. It galls me that so many British firms disappeared, my company's competitors in the US, Germany, Italy, Japan, etc., are still in business.
are you able to tell me how hobs with helical gash leads are made? ive done some researching and found the eureka form relieving setup but in my head that will not work with helical gashes only with straight gashes. thanks.
This is really interesting. Thanks for posting. Modern gear production has changed quite a bit. First a set of gear punches and dies is machined. There are a couple different methods used to make the punches, grinding, and burning, but burning is mostly used now. A tool steel gear punch is rough turned in a lathe and then heat treated to high hardness. After that, its diameters and ends are ground to size. A female gear form electrode is cut from dense graphite in a wire edm. The punch blank is then setup in a ram edm, and the graphite electrode is forced down over the blank punch while being fed high amperage electricity. The entire setup is submerged in dielectric oil. The electricity erodes, or "burns" as it's called, the gear form into the punch blank as the electrode is fed down over the blank. After the roughing burn, subsequent finishing electrodes burn the form close to size. Afterward, a finisher/polisher removes the rough recast layer on the punch with polishing stones, fits the punches to the die, finishes the sizes, and applies the final micro finish to the gear teeth. After that, gear face details are either burned or hard milled into the face, and the polisher goes to work applying a mirror finish to the face detail. This helps increase tool life, and helps keep parts from sticking to it. The die making is the opposite operation. Once the punch and die set is finished, they are setup in a press. A custom blend of metal powders and lubricant is fed into the die cavity, and the punches press the powder into a "green part" under many tons of pressure, and then eject it with the bottom punch. The press and tooling is adjusted to get the proper sizes and part density before production begins. The green parts are belt fed into a long sintering oven, where high temps fuse the powder together and drive off the lubricant. Depending on the tolerances required, some sintered parts are then loaded into a sizing press, which further shapes them slightly to their finished sizes. Many parts inside modern automotive engines and transmissions are made in this manner, including gears, bearings, bushings, main bearing caps, rockers, and connecting rods. Connecting rods are then forged in a die and cryogenically split after sintering to make exact matching sets. I worked in tool and die for years in powder metal manufacturing. I thought someone might find it interesting.
Thanks for the details.
A very clear explanation, thanks. I'm always amazed at how effective edm can be, especially on very hard material.
I love the way it turns into a type of travelog at the end. Very indicative of the era from which it comes. Thank you Fran, these films are priceless in terms of history.
Hey! That's a Fellows #7, I have 4 of then that I use daily in my job; 2 of them make spur gears and one has a rack table fitted. the fourth one makes face gears. even though our machines are 40+ years old they are still surprisingly useful for low volume high turnaround type of work.
When i was an Apprenticein the early 1980's I learned to use Fellows equipment along with myford and Bridgeport lathes, various Bridgeport vertical milling machines , David Brown gear cutters and worm gear hobbing machines. great to see this old film bought back to life . Pity that we can not get back the lost manufacturing jobs that was the life-blood of the UK/USA.
We absolutely can, just start getting into automation. Both big A and small a automation. Robots, fixture pallets, standardized tools. If a small business utilized only small a automation with fixtures and standard tools, they can set up and break down their jobs quickly, run a massive amount of parts per fixture depending on the design, and cycle run time is reduced because of less tool changes during the program.
@@TheDandyMann I could not agree more and that's partly why I work for one of Americas great engineering companies Caterpillar! We have learned to blend small company flexibility with big conglomerate strength.
Wow, small world. My father retired from Fellows, and his brother retired from Bryant Grinder. I'm also related to the Cone family on my mother's side, with Cone Automatic Machine founder Frank Lyman Cone being my great, great grandfather.
I’m getting ready to repair my car at a friends place down the street from the old hydromatic plant near Willow Run airport in Michigan. It’s wild to think that those transmission gear manufacturing lines were in operation decades ago. Fun fact: the supply road laid down during WW2 is still there and in good shape.
The runway is now part of I-94, but the days of GM supplying half the automatic transmissions used in the world are long gone...
[ I grew up in Ann Arbor so I know the history and area. I even knew of two couples who met working at Willow Run during the war...]
Amazing film! I lived in Springfield for 25 years and knew many people who worked at Fellows. I spent some time working for a rebuilder of the 6A and No. 7 Gearshapers.
I thought springfield had a nuclear power plant not a gear factory..
Anyway do you know the family „Simpson“ ?
It’s a well known family there..
as far as i remember they have their own reality show.
On a clear day you can actually see their name in the sky if you look up.
@@ukpkmkk_2 It was a secret nuclear power plant until the reality series outed it. The family lived in my neighborhood. Their jaundice has not improved.
And from here, it was but a short step to the Turboencabulator.
I did my apprenticeship in a company on the south coast of England that made the complete saddle gearboxes for Colchester lathes.
I spent 6 months in all departments including the Gear Cutting section and ended up running that section whilst still an apprentice at the age of 19.
We had Sykes gear hobbers and shapers, Dowding and Doll hobbers and a Maxicut get shaper. Gear teeth were rounded or chamfered and were then induction hardened on a Raydine heat treating machine in the shop. I was responsible for all the gearcutting and associated operations including horizontal and vertical broaching.
So many engineers I have met in my 45 years in the industry know nothing (or very little) about gear manufacture. I would say it's a bit of an art.
Interesting video thanks.
This video is awesome, I know that these promotional videos are created to swoon prospective clients and contractors, but the amount of detail in their processes is incredible, and I love how proud were they back then to be licensors of technologies by other companies. Also, loved that small detail about golf and skiing in the end.
Keep them coming Fran and thanks for digitizing these little unknown gems!
EDIT: It has been mentioned in other comments, but I find it amazing that some of the Fellows machines (some of the more modern ones) are still being sold and some even remanufactured by Bourn & Koch to this day!
Thanks for sharing!
I used to live in Springfield. I was trained as a machinist there after I left my job at the local radio station. I applied for a janitor job at one of the shops after an argument with the radio station owner and they put me on a 5-axis VMC making cutter bodies and other complex parts. On one occasion, I visited a small shop in the old Fellows building that was refurbishing gear shapers and got to see some in action. Wonderful machines!
These days I'm back at the radio station.
I'm a metal lathe operator, but in the same shop I work is a business that rents out hobs. I have often wondered how exactly they were used, as I sat by their stock-shelf eating lunch; and now I know. Those are seriously impressive machines!
😁 they are! Get yourself certified as a general machinist, I don't regret any moment of it, and honestly the hardest part has always been the lathe, specifically knurling and part off.
My #1 tip on parting off is ensuring the blade is truly perpendicular to the machine axis. A parallel between the blade and chuck face will accomplish that.
And maybe this is common practice, but the way I was taught to do knurling (with a quick change tool post) is to first set the tool post or compound slide a few degrees off, where the angle opens to the feed direction. Then, set the knurling tool height by leaving the post a bit loose, then bringing it up to the workpiece (lathe off), and wiggling it up and down while feeding in until it becoms solid, then lock the toolpost. Now you can back off, start the machine, and form the knurl. Move the carriage so the knurls are mostly off the work, then feed in until firmly engaged, then slowly move the carriage to cover the work. The angle hopefully lets you get it in one pass. More cross-slide pressure and moving back and forth is okay, but don't let the rolls leave the work until you are sure you have the depth you need. Low RPM, lots of oil, and Bob's your uncle. Also, might only be possible to get light knurling on anything harder than mild or free machining steel.
@@DrewskisBrews aye, that is the common in a manual but a CNC is a while diffrent story.
And getting the buggers to line up right and get a perfect knurl is a royal pain, especially when you have a O.D. that's just on the edge of what's possible for the avalible knurlers wheels.
I like hearing you expert machinists speaking in a language I don't understand.👍 Things you guys take for granted. As a refrigeration tech for over 30 years I also have a language that is foreign to most, and can only be understood by others in my field, after adequate experience, of course. Knowledge I take for granted. Yours is fascinating to me and much appreciated because it represents a high level of knowledge and skill in a specialized field, of which we can not live without, without giving up so many things we enjoy in day to day life. Are we a dying breed? I hope not. I can say it is nearly impossible to find serious apprentices in my field with any technical training or schooling. I'm not going to live forever!
Again, thanks 👍.
Fran, this work is very important for the sake of technology as well as history. Thank you! Sadly, this seemed to have been the last of the great days in Springfield, VT. Those in charge didn't learn from their predecessors that they must continually innovate to stay relevant. That said, there was a 100 good years of innovation in the Fellows Gear Shaping Company.
Wow. This one really strikes home. My dad was a mechanical engineer for Linde (Union Carbide) in the 1950s through the 1980s. From time to time, he would take me to the factory, and the engineering lab, where they had lots of machines for making new and replacement parts for machines they made for steel mill operations. I always loved those trips. Now, practically nothing is made here in the U. S. ☹️ Thanks for this nostalgic trip back in time!
And the fact that nothing is made by U.S. citizens signals their obselecense.
We still make all the movies, songs, planes, guns, 99% of all the stuff in a major supermarket, all the high tech medical equipment, all the High tech machines to make electronic chips, all large scale projects to make power, nuclear, water, coal, gas plants, Lots and lots of Chemicals, we built Saudi Arabia all the machinery to process the oils, and the list goes on we build most of the stuff in the world. and lots construction tools, equipment too.
Thank You Fran. This one appeals to my true inner geek. I saw this gads decades ago in school shop class but thought it lost to time. You are a gem!
What fantastic machines. Very smart people designed and engineered these industrial workhorses and they did it without computers. Complex, yet reliable machines made when American manufacturing was still very much at its peak. This is so underappreciated today.
Glad to see this film being shown, and in such pristine quality. It's a great look back at a great company in the greatest era of American history.
The evolution of precision machines like this is a good example of bootstrapping: the parts for the the prototypes of these machines must have been made using one generation of older technology, all the way back to production of the first gears using hand tools.
I'm stunned that this level of precision and automation was possible almost 60 years ago.
I'm still mindblown at the skillset those oldschool machinists had to develop and retain. Good stuff.
Really great film! The sales pitch for Springfield is pretty fun too. The old boy *wink wink nudge nudge* bit was groan worthy. I wonder if that plant was ever run by East coast mega super villain, Scorpio?
Hank Scorpio doesn't believe in walls. Please come in.
I love these Fran. Just awesome work. Thank you for your efforts.
Thank you Fran. Love these old films. I am still an active gear hobber, having my start in 1979 with Martin Sprocket and Gear.
I dearly love these awesome machines and others like them, which perform incredible, accurate and complex functions without being attached to a general purpose computer. What incredible engineering.
great find Fran.."In operation, the involute is generated as the grinding wheel is rotated in harmony with the work" expresses engineer's prose...goes along with Buckaroo Bonzai's synchronized over thruster...sorta.
There is traffic now in Springfield! A friend owns one of the buildings at the Fellows plant and he rebuilds gear shapers and makes gears on order. Usually small production runs or one offs. Fascinating is the history of the Precision Valley and the tools that were made there. Sadly all gone now.
I'd like to know the name of his company. Will you help?
@@ATMAtim What is your reason?
I spent the last five years of my career setting up and running Fellows 8AGS machines.
This brought back some great memories!
Thank you for sharing these wonderful documents, Fran. What gorgeously analog machines! I've cut simple involute gears on general purpose lathes and milling machines, but these shapers and hobbers are so elegantly specialized.
I worked with those machines for a few years, along with Gleason Bevel generators. Once you had them set up, you could easily make hundreds of gears with no problems, provided you kept the cutters sharp. Thanks for a bit of nostalgia.
What were the Gleason's that you had? I also have a couple that I run at my job.
Thanks a lot Fran- this preserves an enormous amount of knowledge.
I grew up in Springfield, the center of Precision Valley. The town hasn't changed much for looks. Hartness House is still there, country club, the building that had Fellows in it is still there, the bridge, the falls and Mt. Ascutney hasn't eroded away. Now they also hang glide off Ascutney or it's a good day hike. The end of that film brought back memories.
Gears are fun to make, esp on the mill. Great video and thanks for sharing another how-it's-made video.
Back in 2006 I took a machine tool hand scraping class in Springfield VT. I even stayed at the Hartness House for a week. Very nice old mansion/hotel. The Hartness House has some interesting amateur built telescopes and observatories on the property and at least one of them is accessible via tunnel from the house. Old man Hartness was quite the amateur astronomer and had plenty of money to spend on his hobby. Anyhow...
The hand scraping class I took was hosted by Gear Works Inc. Which is located in one of the old Fellows factory buildings. The person who runs Gear Works was a former field engineer at Fellows before they they were sold off. He also rebuilds Fellow gear shapers and equipment. We got a detailed tour of his facilities and Fellows machines he uses and ones he was rebuilding for customers. Fellows also made a line of tools for inspecting gears, gear cutters, and setup tools. There are several videos on TH-cam on the design and generation of gears.
Thank You!
You and saving this old archive complement each other extremely well, sort of super apt.
I love the machine paint colors and how wonderfully clean they are
Top fit and finish, they really cared about the quality back then
Nice tour or Springfield at the end.
Awesome movie, both the video and audio quality is excellent. I bet it hasn't been played too many times. It covers an interesting aspect of mechanical engineering too - to someone unintroduced like me, it's all so complicated, but at the same time the basic principle of operation is quite simple. Devil is in the details, like always :).
Fran likely restored it on her computer as the evergreen trees were not reddish in color...
I ran 6 fellows gear rack cutters for several months just out of college in 2007, I was low man on the totem pole, so I never did setup, but I became pretty familiar with their design. The machines I was running were WW2 war production equipment that had been updated in the 70s to have individual electrical motors instead of the original line shaft power.
Thanks for the neat video!
Thank you Fran!!! I love watching these older videos! You're the best!!!
Hi Fran. What a fascinating and eclectic collection you have. Looking forward to the next one. Thank you so much for saving and sharing these films.
the narrator's voice really grinds my gears
Amazing video, i love these type of instructional videos. British Pathe is a treasure chest of these type of techniques in the uk, covers so many fields!
The cleanest machinery I have ever seen.
Gear hoping machines. I’ve seen them run in person. I used cut gears all the time on a horizontal mill with a dividing head. I was a certified tool and die maker for 25 years. Got back into my childhood love of electronics about 20 years ago. I don’t know how I ended up in the machining/CNC programmer trade over electronics. Can’t complain, great pay but my back, hands are paying the price now loading heavy blanks in lathes or up on mill tables and grinders for years. Cool video.
I spent a number of years working for a German-owned company in Virginia using a Fellows 10-4 gear shaper and Pfauter P250 and P400 gear hobbing machines. Tooling was metric and typical tolerances were 0.03mm or less. The gears we made ranged in size from about 25mm to 500mm in diameter.
Excellent docutainment Fran! Gears..so many uses it boggles the mind. Those old machinists were artists for sure.
I love the adventure into the past. Thank you.
I don't know how you get your hands on these old films, Fran, but I am here for it!
I love the little 'waterfall' for the cutting oil
When I worked at Buick in Flint, Michigan, I would visit the building where they made the transmission parts. I remember seeing Red Ring Shapers cutting gears, but don’t recall any Fellows. I’m sure they had some there. I worked on bevel gear cutters called Revacycles made by Gleason. The gears were for the carriers ( differentials) for the front wheel drive vehicles.
Wow thank you so much for this amazing video, I go up to Springfield every year for a telescope convention and drive by this great buidliing. These hobbers really just are amazing pieces of art and make beautiful gears even to this day.
Fantastic machines. Cutting and hobing are incredible processes.
Smoking legal herb and watching these old films is great!!
I love the combination of not just a product showcase, but then a showcase of the beauty of Vermont. Companies were proud of their hometowns. Also, kinda funny how times have changed... In the little aside at the end, the stop, to "admire the scenery *ahem*" would never ever fly in a modern corporate video. But then, it was perfectly normal and acceptable.
I know a gear shop that still uses machines of this vintage in their daily operations.
thanks for that wonderful video of our technological heritage it is really appreciated.
I love shit like this ! My curiosity was brought on when I got a job a Hardinge Inc. as a final assembler on Lathes , Mills and Cylindrical Grinders . I loved that job .
There is something to running a high precision industrial machine that is like no other.
I felt compelled to look up the story of company founder Edward R. Fellows, and it's pretty interesting - at least I thought it was. It's definitely worth looking up. The Fellows Gear Shaping Company may be gone - thanks to a series of corporate acquisitions that began in the 70s through the early 2000s - but the Fellows brand and product line continues to live and thrive under the ownership of Bourn & Koch of Rockford, IL, since 2002. Thanks Again for the great film, Fran.
Great video and one of a very few videos I've seen about the Fellows Gear Shaper Companies machines that was founded by my great grandfather's brother Edwin Russell Fellows who died in 1945.
I suddenly have the urge to take a trip to Vermont and buy a shaper! Side note- Gear guys are Wizards.
Another glimpse into a different era. Fascinating!!
Lovely piece of history. The Fellows main building is still there.
Nature on film looks so beautiful.
I just love these classic info films it’s great to see how they worked materials in the past.
Our high school had an old small Fellows mill. Loved it.
I could watch this stuff all day long.
That is a very impressive analog computer.
I'm going to say it's not a computer. There's no 'processing of information' - i.e. no decisionmaking. It's just a dumb robot doing repeated operations. If you want analogue computers, look at automatic gearboxes (old style).
@@millomweb I disagree. The interplay between the various gears / cams / levers is almost identical to an IC: the internal workings are fixed, though it’s possible to configure which of the internal workings are engaged to produce dramatically processed outputs.
@@BobWidlefish I don't think you have the mental ability to even understand what we could be discussing. Why bring ICs into it ?
Love these OLD videos.
Keep them coming !
I love these informative movies from this time period!
Longtime lurker never comment but love this video. Sure hope civilization doesn’t have to claw its way through this phase again after a fall. Under appreciated part of the “tech tree”
Isn’t it amazing what was done and made before calculators and computers were in common use. Slide rules and understanding of mechanics and principles. The men and women who designed and made this stuff were of a different caliber than today’s engineers. Pretty amazing stuff.
And to think that all this is done today with computer and CNC machines.
Those were the days when machinists knew what they were doing and how to operate mechanical gear making!
I wonder if Fellows is the same company that now makes paper shredders and office products?
Wonderful video and film. Thanks Fran!
Don't give me the gears Fran. Unbelievable colors and picture quality. Great stuff Fran
I would love to see the programming mechanism on that. I'm imagining cams, toggles, and relays.
9:34 Every guy's 18th birthday trip to Vegas. (I know I'm going straight to hell for that!)
Now the machine that made that cutter, and the machine that made that machine...they were gods back then. Time to go visit Hoover dam again.
so wonderful Fran, thank yo so much for letting us see this great video...cheers from Florida , Paul
Awesome content :D Keep them up. Just love those old reels.
Beautiful colours in this film ❤️💚💙
Love it! Having worked in machining and modern automation, I love seeing the pure mechanical logic of old automation compared to modern computerization!
Sure makes you mistrust the computer even more.
Thanks Fran, will be interesting to see what else you bring out of the old film box in the future...
Fran please put this fantastic Archive up on another Channel.
What ah excellent video. Great colour, great soundtrack, great footage.
Maan! These documentaries... They dont make them like this anymore. I feel i can do a gear right now.
I worked to sharpen these cutting tools when I was employed at "BRONZES D'INDUSTRIE" in France in 1980, all these machines were scrapped around the year 2000.
I didn't know I wanted to know how gears were made. :) Thank you.
Friends of ours have a gear shop in same building we're in. Pretty much still same equipment, they go great work !
Love the delivery - reminds me of the turbo encabulator.
Amazing, Fran! The look of that film stock and Vermont! What a lovely town in that film!
We in R.I...have a company called Tracy gear, they did all this type of work.
I think they're still in business, I remember going there 35 yrs ago.
Keith Rucker will love this video
One appreciates how much better CNC machines have made this process....
WOW 🤐 takes my back to my days as a machinist many years ago 👍
My grandfather had an early version of these fellows's gear cutting machines on his shop. (The vertical alternating cutter/shaper version, made on Springfield)
I remember the smell of the cutting oil.
„We are know worldwide for our fine gear making machines we licensed from companies in Switzerland and Germany“
Some are salesman, others are engineers. 😎
Amazing video. Thanks for sharing.
Fascinating! Amazing and beautiful old analog computers, too.
Neat video! I gives a lot of ideas for means of making my own gears with an Arduino and some steppers.
This is fascinating.
For volume gear production in specialized shops, these machines are probably still being used...