Also known to have made small precision milling machines, the MARF Company was clearly involved in the manufacture of high-precision machine tools.
Looking to have a centre height of around 102 mm and able to accept 500 mm between centres, the MARF precision bench lathe was constructed, like so many of its kind, on a substantial bed with a flat top and bevelled edges to locate the headstock, carriage and tailstock. As shown by the two examples below, it's clear that MARF offered the lathe able to be set-up in the following ways: with a screw-feed compound slide rest for use by a toolmaker for simple but very accurate one-off work; as a "second-operation" lathe equipped to be a single part of a production process with the slide rest and tailstock fitted with lever operation. Finally, as a full-blown production lathe, a bed-mounted indexing capstan unit would have been fitted together with lever-operation of the headstock collet closer and tailstock spindle.
As is so often the case with French makers, little sales literature appears to survive for MARF; should any reader be able to add more details to this article, the writer would be delighted to hear from you.
Si un lecteur pouvait ajouter plus de détails à cet article, l'auteur lui en serait très reconnaissant.