RAPID SHEARING.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17748, 27 April 1923, Page 3

RAPID SHEARING.

This ttile bears no relation to tho pastoral industry. It concerns a range of machines recently produced by a British designer who has displayed a remarkable ingenuity for originality in his methods. Until recently most people acquainted with the work of cutting steel plates would have been very sceptical about the possibility of a machine weighing only 17 cwt being capable of cutting half-inch steel plates with ease at a rate so extraordinarily high as 23ft per minute. The behaviour of the machine is quite satisfactory at this speed, but in practice a cutting speed of 10ft per minute is recommended, as this enables the operator to cut exactly to a line and stop precisely at any desired point. At this speed only 15 brake-horse power is required for cutting half-inch steel plate. Another and lighter shearing machine has been designed by the same engineer for cutting mild steel plate up to one-eighth inch thick. This it cuts at the remarkable rate of 75 feet per minute, with only about horse power. Even greater ingenuity is shown in hand-operated machines devisd by the same genius. One of these is capable of cutting corrugated iron in any direction, and of doing light ■metal shearing work in general. Others are intended for punching and bending operations, and embody a hydraulic device which enables an almost incredible pressure to be exerted by one man operating a hand lever. In actual fact a pressure of twenty tons can be produced in this way by repeated strokes of the lever. The pressure is exerted on a ram which had a stroke of 4in, and it can be maintained through the whole of the four inches of travel. Thus a man with very little exertion can punch a hole through a thick steel plate. The same machine can be usefully employed in test- ! ing the deflection of powerful springs, j