email: tony@lathes.co.uk
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lathes.co.uk
Bath Universal Grinder by
Fitchburg Machine Co. U.S.A.

A high-quality reproduction of the
maker's sales catalog is available

Dating from the early 1900s, the "Bath" was able to perform external, internal, surface and tool and tool cutter grinding. With the addition of extra-cost accessories it could also tackle gear cutter work, inserted tooth cutter grinding, and knife grinding.
The machine appeared at a time when more and more machine tools were being equipped with self-contained motor drives; extrapolating from the maker's text, earlier versions were also manufactured with some of these almost certainly having drive from some form of remote countershaft of overhead line shafting.
Over the decades many similar models have been made, these ending up as very much more robust machines such as the range made by Jones and Shipman and K.O.Lee.
The Bath was sold in the UK by the Broadway Engineering Company Ltd., a firm that marketed another simpler form of grinder (with their own name cast in) and also badged the Clausing 100 lathe as if made by themselves..
From Vintage Machinery.org we learn that the Fitchburg Machine Company. was a stock company that was reorganization in January of 1867 as the S. C. Wright & Co. The principals were Sylvester C. Wright and his son-in-law James L. Chapman. In 1877, the company reorganized again, this time as the Fitchburg Machine Works. In 1905, the company was bought by Marcus A. Coolidge and subsequently merged with the Seneca Falls Machine Co. with patents being assigned to the Fitchburg Machine Works as late as 1917. The Company made a very wide range of machine tools including grinders, engine lathes, wagon-axle lathes, planers, drill presses and shapers, etc.






A high-quality reproduction of the
maker's sales catalog is available

Lathes.co.uk
Bath Universal Grinder by
Fitchburg Machine Co. U.S.A.
email: tony@lathes.co.uk
Home   Machine Tool Archive   Machine-tools Sale & Wanted
Machine Tool Manuals   Catalogues   Belts   Books   Accessories