When I was about 14 years old, the female spline in the rear hub of our old Allis Chalmers B wore to nothing and that was hay mowing done for that day. I pulled the wheel hub and visited a local machine shop who tried to explain why they couldn't help (especially at the price we could afford...)
Putting new steel in where it was needed seemed simple enough to a guy who had no idea how the spline had been accomplished in the first place. When the broaching process was explained to me, I realized that it was an integral part of manufacturing, though I'm not sure I've ever seen an actual machine. Simply explained, a lathe removes metal by chiseling it away in a rotational motion, broaching chisels linearly. No news to many of the audience, I know, but a broach is effectively a collection of single-point cutting tools arrayed in sequence, cutting one after the other. Broaching was developed during the 1850s as the need for accurate keyways in shafts, pulleys and gears developed. in the mid 1890s, Joseph Napoleon Lapointe, originally from Ste. Hyacinthe, Québec, invented a much improved broaching process and left Pratt and Whitney to start his own company. That company, Lapointe Machine Tool, struggled along for awhile till J N was forced out in 1911. He and his son immediately started the J N Lapointe Company, making broaching machines like the ones in this post in direct competition to his former company. The original Lapointe Machine Tool company is still around. J N died in 1928 and the son Francis shows up later in Ann Arbor at the American Broach Co. which served the automotive companies and munitions industry, especially during WW2. It is also still active today under different ownership.
As for that struggling, sunburnt teenager in the hayfield, he ultimately got a used hub at a wrecking yard, first experience with that world, and the haymowing resumed.
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Cyclopedia of Modern Shop Practice, American Technical Society Vol III, 1919 |
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