Antique lathe style backgear drill press spotted in India

[m1kemex]

I'm doing an ongoing research on drill presses and I found this peculiar specimen offered in India. It's got the same traditional backgear mechanism you see in many antique lathe's headstock built right into the head:

 

[Janderso]

I'm doing an ongoing research on drill presses and I found this peculiar specimen offered in India. It's got the same traditional backgear mechanism you see in many antique lathe's headstock built right into the head:

The videos on Youtube showing the casting of parts, the machine work and final assembly of these machines is lots of fun to watch.
The obvious concern is the material that goes into the stew for the cast products. They put any and all ferrous metal into the kettle.
The lathes are made the same way.
Just my personal thoughts. I could be wrong.

 

[bl00]

If you're looking for more drills like that take a look at the Elliot Progress drill and the Electro Mechano.

 

[m1kemex]

The videos on Youtube showing the casting of parts, the machine work and final assembly of these machines is lots of fun to watch.
The obvious concern is the material that goes into the stew for the cast products. They put any and all ferrous metal into the kettle.
The lathes are made the same way.
Just my personal thoughts. I could be wrong.

Yeah, it's a business built around the fact that scrap metal costs a small fraction of new, "grade" material. That's actually the reason China sold machine tools at attractive prices for a long time. It's not a new idea, though: here in Mexico there is a company called Vimalert that follows that model. And it's common in places like India, Pakistan and Turkey.

As you pointed out, problem is that you really don't know what you'll get when you melt the scrap to do the castings. Actually, China just forbade metal production using induction furnaces because they don't have refining capabilities. For things like machine tools it's not really a big deal, but they were making things like rebar and that seriously undermined the safety on new buildings.

If you're looking for more drills like that take a look at the Elliot Progress drill and the Electro Mechano.

Thanks. I just checked out and the Progress drills seem like serious stuff!

Thing is, the Indian drill presses caught my eye because they are contemporary machines / currently in production.