Schaublin machine tools are manufactured in Switzerland by CH. Schaublin-Villeneuve with (at various times) the head office and main machine-tool factory at Bévilard, lathe and milling machine accessories in Tremelan, an experimental department and training school at Malleray, the manufacture of spare parts in Orvin and a collet factory in Delémont. With the exception of hydroelectricity, wood and tourism Switzerland has no natural resources beyond the skill and ingenuity of its people in the provision of various service industries and the manufacture of high-class, value-added goods. Through the 1920s and 1930s the founder of the company, Charles Schaublin, played a personal part in maintaining and improving traditional Swiss quality standards by running the works as a personal fiefdom. He kept a close eye on everything: from the important - the initial designs of new machines and selection of metals - to the mundane, the choice of materials for export packaging. His original products were exclusively for the Swiss horological industry (and as such would have included numerous one-off items to assist with specialist manufacturing processes) and it was only in the 1930s that the company turned its attention to precision lathes. At first these were all plain-turning types, similar in concept to the well-established American "bench precision" models as made for many years by, amongst others: Stark, The American Watch Tool Company, B.C. Ames, Ballou & Whitcombe, Wade, Pratt & Whitney, Rivett, Cataract, Hardinge, Elgin, Hjorth, Potter, Remington, Sloan & Chace, Waltham Machine Works, Frederick Pearce, Sawyer Watch Tool Co. and Fenn-Sadler. However, one early Schaublin model was rather novel, the Type 65, a lathe that, with a 65 mm centre height, was appreciably smaller than the usual type; this version proved so handy and popular that a version of it continues in production today as the Type 70.
In the year 2000 Schaublin were bought out and split into three parts, with three or four Swiss machine-tool dealers (including the well-known 'Muller" Company) buying the one-third that produced conventional lathes together with a section responsible for gears and pinions for the machine-tool industry. Production of other precision machines, machining centres and various other items continued in Bévilard, with a subsidiary also operating in Germany. The earliest complete information available to the writer dates from 1938 - by which time lathe manufacture was well established, with a growing international reputation and increasing export sales. At that time the centre-lathe range consisted of four models (suffix numbers refer to the centre height in mm): the SV65, SV70, SV90, SV102 and SV130. All were available as plain-turning, repetition or (excluding the SV65) capstan types with just the SV102 and SV130 made as a proper backgeared and screwcutting models. Either immediately after or in the closing year of the war the 120-VMA was announced, a larger plain-turning precision lathe with a capacity between centres of 500 mm. A comparatively rare machine the 120-VM was described by Schaublin as a "Toolmaker's" lathe and, looking just like a larger version of the 102-VM, is always found mounted on a very heavy cast-iron stand usually with a variable-speed drive system. Milling machines were originally restricted to smaller models, such as the ingenious, miniature ram-head Type SV11 and the SV12 horizontal/vertical models with a multi-angle swiveling and tilting table - an arrangement not unlike that used on the better-known German Thiel, Mayo and Deckel millers. The factory also turned out a vast range of collets, a number of small, bench-sensitive drills for use in precision workshops and toolrooms, an automatic multi-head drilling machine for the production of watch plates; a lathe for the finishing of cams used by Swiss autos, drill tap and die sharpeners, moulding machines, automatic gear-tooth rounders, compressors, lapping machines, letter and number stamps and other rather more specialised items such as an automatic multiple drilling machine for watch plates and a tool and cutter grinder dedicated to the sharpening of the "D" bits used in gun-boring lathes. By the end of World War Two Schaublin, in addition to a widening range of lathes (and horological and special-order machine tools) had also branched out into the manufacture of larger precision milling machines.
From 1945 onwards (as far as can be established) Schaublin machine tools were painted in four different colours: until the late 1950s a green-grey was used - for which no specification exists - and from the 1960s until the late 1970s a blue-grey close to, but not identical with DIN 37020. After that, and running until the early 1990s, a change was made to RAL 6011, a form of the "standard European machine-tool green". More recent colours include a "Machine light-blue" to NCS 1020-R80B - but with fabricated benches painted in a textured finish to RAL 5012 and cast-iron stands in NCS 3030-R90B. As the factory would also finish machines to a customer's specification it is impossible to be categorical as to what is original - but don't paint your Schaublin in General Motors Pulsating Primrose…….