The primary information source was the history page of the South Bend web site or the Wayback Machine.A Guide to Renovating the South Bend Lathe Models 10L 13 14-1/2 16.
1947-present: serial numbers with letters codes are explained on South Bend Lathe Co.'s serial number page.1919 to 1947: serial numbers from 700 to 186,514 may found in our South Bend serial numbers wiki page.Machine serial numbers can be interpreted using the following resources:.Madison St., South Bend 22, Indiana.įinal address: 1735 N. produced castings for South Bend machinery, until the early to mid-1980s.Īddress (1949 Popular Mechanics): 425 E. On the remaining assets were auctioned on-site, at the Bendix Dr. They survived, however, and continued making lathes, turret mills, and roll grinders until April orMay 2007. It is not known when manufacture of drill presses ceased - perhaps in 1975, when the company encountered financial difficulties. It appears that it was during this time that they began making drill presses. They expanded the product line to include drill and tapping machines, and mechanical presses. The company was acquired in 1959 by American Steel, later known as Amsted Industries. For many years, most machinists learned their lathe skills on machines from this maker. Their lathes were enormously successful, and they eventually manufactured a wide variety of engine lathes and general-purpose lathes. In 1908 they changed the company name to South Bend Lathe Works. After working for several years around Indiana, they founded their own firm to build a machinist lathe whose design they had been refining for many years. They had both spent their early working years at the Stanley Works Miles worked for Thomas Edison for a time, and then the two of them studied engineering at Purdue University. was founded in 1906 by identical twins John O'Brien and Miles O'Brien. Nope, I have no dog in that fight but I am an active member of several clubs, attend several model engineering shows annually, hate douchebags, and nobody I know in the hobby will touch that site with a 10' pole bc everyone knows the history.The South Bend Machine Tool Co. The only forum I'm aware of that started bc of folks booted on other forums was the hobby-machinist site which was started by a member booted from PM, HSM, and Chaski for well over the top bad behavior, who subsequently spammed the crap out of those forums, copy/pasted entire threads from them into his own forum, copied popular usernames to make it appear popular senior members elsewhere were on his site, and a whole host of other nonsense which continues. With that one as well there isnt any animosity and owners/mods are on both, its just an old simple disagreement. PM was actually started bc of Chaski, quite a few folks didnt like how it was operated ~15 years ago so PM began. Don/Milacron is a member there and occasionally posts. The HSM bbs site and Chaski have both been around longer, HSM started naturally bc of the magazines. Even a few teenagers get along well there. There's only a few subforums where hobbyists need be careful on there, those that deal with modern machines/machining. Several of the other subforums are similar - mostly hobbyists talking antique iron and nobody cares if they ignore a few rules so long as theyre civil. He doesnt mind hobbyists, heck, the SB subforum on PM is mostly hobbyists who know little/nothing of machine operation or repair. Nah, Don (Milacron) is simply a machinist turned machine tool dealer. There is a wealth of info, and I can pretty much guarantee that any question you may have, has already been answered there. And the lathe is still usable - maybe annoying, but usable.Įven if you don't register/post over on PM, you might do some searching on the SB forum there. It may be beyond you at this point, but in a year or so, you may be ready to tackle it. And I think it's been documented over on the SB forum of Practical Machinist. If you scratch around steve wells website,, you'll find examples of people that have done so. The way this is typically dealt with is, you cut off the threaded section, turn or purchase a new threaded section, then drill/bore/ream and slip fit the new section to the old portion which still has the gear. I'd bet that's a good portion of what you paid for the machine, though. Here's a link to Miller Machine, where $275 buys a new screw (w/gear) and a new nut: I wouldn't go in that direction, it has it's own set of perils. Click to expand.I seem to remember that at one point, there was a casting change which may hang up the geared section.