The Erik Eriksson Junior "Slant-bed" lathe with the rear bed ways set below those at the front - along the lines of the rather more extreme English Willson version
Continued:
By the mid-1930s, a move was made to newly-built premises in Eskilstunavägen, where a line of casting machines, lathes and hydraulically driven surface-grinding machines was developed.
During 1938 and 1939 a new, very-well-liked geared-head lathe was developed that sold well into small engineering companies as well as technical and vocational training schools. During World War II (1939 to 1945) orders were received from both the Swedish Air Force and Navy as well as large industrial concerns including Sandviken AB, Atlas Copco, Scania Vabis and Davy Robertson As a result of this wartime activity, by 1944, the workforce had expanded, including clerical staff, to around 80. In 1949 a further extension was made to the factory and the design team expanded to cope with the introduction of semi-automatic production machinery.
In 1954 the firm was reorganized with AB Torshälla Machines being responsible manufacturing with a separate company handling marketing and sales. For several years the firm ran Torshällamaskineren's own apprentice school where boys leant the intricacies of machine tool design and function, mathematics, blueprint reading and craft skills.
By 1967 Torshälla Machinery had grown to around 90 employees but, a few years later, during the 1970s, was sold to Ulvsunda Garages and renamed UVA Torshälla with trading being conducted using the name Redim. By now NC controls were being introduced and Torshälla were an early adopter with several of their lathes being converted using a control system from Data SAAB. Further developments were made with CNC machines but, due to a declining economy during the eighties, and with strong competition from abroad, Torshälla Machines began to struggle. In 1982 a new CNC lathe, the S-180CNC, was introduced, a replacement for the earlier and smaller Type S-160CNC - though by now production numbers has fallen to 50 per year against some 300 in the early 1960s - a level at which profitability (even supported by a strong spare-parts' business) was impossible.
Unfortunately production lasted only a few more years and, in the 1990s, the factory closed. The premises still exist and are now used by the "Torshälla House" a trading estate with a number of different occupants.
Some of the machines tools manufactured by the company included the Model S-175 lathe; TMC-84 (Machining centre), 8109 a special machine delivered b.la. Sandvik Germany, the control system coming from the USA and CNC lathes with model numbers S-150, S-160, S-175 CNC and S-250. Other items included, over the decades, turret lathes, automatic copying machines, light and heavy-duty drills and grinding machines..