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WEISSER Lathes
Weisser Precision Bench Lathes   Weisser Lathe of the Early 20th Century   Weisser 1940/50s

In Germany there were two machine-tool companies with the name Weisser:  Eugen Weisser from Heilbronn and the subject of these pages,  Johann Georg Weisser of  St.Georgen in the Black Forest (also listed as J.G.Weisser Söhne). Until 1957 they built a range of conventional centre, bench precision and capstan lathes - and a number of milling machines, drills and special-purpose machine tools - but from then, cleverly foreseeing the future, concentrated their efforts on machines under various forms of electronic control. Today, based at Bundesstrasse 1, Saint Georgen, Baden, they produce a range CNC machine tools with many built specially for the automobile industry.
If you have a Weisser lathe, or additional information about the company, the writer would be interested to hear from you.

Certainly not state-of-the-art, even for 1830, this simple plain-turning lathe was one of Weisser's first. The bed construction appears to be iron-reinforced wood

Weisser factory in 1880

The Weisser factory as it was in 1912

Weisser capstan lathe of 1873

Long-bed Weisser lathe ready for delivery in 1876. Note the extra foot in the middle of the bed, the two early-patter fixed-steadies (they had drop-in sections of various depths) and the bevel-gear reverse (as used on American Atlas lathes for many years) fitted to the leadscrew at its headstock end. Not only were the changewheels and headstock backgears unguarded (as on many other contemporary machine tools) the unusual (and dangerous) exposed gearing on the apron had almost become a Weisser trade mark. This lathe appears to lack the usual hand-operated rack-and-pinion gearing to propel the carriage up and down the bed and instead is fitted with just power feed.

Also from 1876 this Weisser is of lower centre height than the example above but appears to have a bed of around the same length. Instead of  bevel-gear reverse to the leadscrew a conventional tumble-reverse assembly was incorporated in the changewheel drive. With an absence of guards over gears and belts, and the crude bell chuck with its protruding screws, in today's terms this machine was a nasty accident waiting to happen.

Backgeared and screwcutting Weisser of 1896. This lathe has a number of interesting features including the design of headstock spindle - with the end thrust taken on an outboard plate - a feature that all makers dropped just a few years later. Whilst the carriage still has its crudely exposed gears for power sliding and surfacing speeds the drive arrangement is surprisingly up-to-date with an "open-frame" electric motor carried on a cast-in plate at the rear of the headstock-end leg. The motor is geared down to run a countershaft - again built in as part of the structure - though its guard is, as ever, perfunctory. This must have been one of the earliest uses of a screwcutting gearbox on a Weisser, the type looking like a Norton quick-change, as invented in America. There was no tumble reverse fitted to the changewheel drive to the gearbox, instead a rod was provide, running the length of the bed, that operated a simple dog-clutch to stop and start the cut. There is a good chance that the system worked both when screwcutting and using the power sliding feed.

Mind your toes

Another 1898 Weisser of a very similar pattern to that above--but fitted to a treadle stand

A simple horizontal milling with power feed to the table from 1896

1898 precision lathe on self-contained "trumpet" treadle stand. For lightweight lathes this was a popular arrangement and also used by, amongst others, Pittler
Photographs of this Weisser can be seen here.

A particularly well-specified capstan lathe from 1919 with clutched drive, all-geared headstock with centralised spindle-speed control, power sliding to the turret head and carriage and a hand-operated capstan feed in addition to the gravity bar feed unit.

A beautifully built and very heavy precision toolroom lathe as manufactured from 1920 to 1932. This lathe featured a very deep and heavy bed; concentric levers giving centralised control of the spindle speeds; third-shaft control of the spindle and what seems to have been an arrangement to provide automatic disengage to the carriage drive

A small capstan Weisser with an integrated drive system from the early 1920s

A heavily-built general-purpose lathe from 1940 with distinctively American lines . However the threaded headstock spindle shows that it lacks that most essential USA development of the 1930s, the rigid and safe "American long-nose taper" fitting

1925 to 1949 A well-specified small capstan lathe with chase screwcutting and 12-position carriage stops that worked for movements both towards and away from the headstock. The motor protruding from the front, and the large boss supporting the spindle-speed change lever must both have come between the operator and his efficient operation of the lathe


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WEISSER Lathes
Weisser Precision Bench Lathes   Weisser lathe of the 1920s