Adcock and Shipley manufactured and factored a vast range of engineering equipment including, from the early to late 1950s, two sizes of a remarkable "Universal Machine Tool", a machine not unlike that produced in Japan as the Dainichi. It was believed that the built took place not in Adcock's Leicester factory but at that of Thomas Ryder & Son Ltd. of Turner Bridge, Bolton. Ryder also sold the larger Universal under their own name - but were better known for their piston-ring machines, a small range of specialist lathes and the remarkable "Verticalauto", a vertical multi-spindle automatic that, despite sounding very Italian, was all-British.
Boasting a very complete specification, the "Universal" offered a lot in a relatively small space - the smaller occupying a footprint of only 7 ft. by 3 ft. and the larger 11' 6"b y 3' 8" with each including a screwcutting and power-feeds lathe, a cylindrical/universal grinder, a vertical/horizontal miller and a drill. Instead of a sliding or elevating beds and headstock as used on many other machines of the same type, the Ryder was built around a conventional centre lathe with each separate machine tool being self powered and capable (apart from the grinder) of all being run at the same time. The unit was designed originally for shipboard use and met the various specifications laid down by the British Admiralty for that purpose. Some examples must also have been exported with one, serial number 692, order 19230 dated June, 1959, being delivered to the New Zealand Navy in 1960.
Not only were the machines very versatile, heavily built and well finished, they were also constructed to be as "shockproof" as possible and - on a smaller boat either would indeed have been a most useful tool for assisting with general maintenance and repairs. It is rumoured that only twenty-four of the smaller type were made (it was just too limited in work capacity to appeal) while figures for the larger are unknown. Some are believed to have gone into navel vessels - though not submarines, whose workshops were too small, the machine's one great disadvantage, the generous working space required on all four sides counting against it.
Extremely substantial, as one would expect, the main base of the smaller type was welded up from steel plate and weighed in the region of 1 ton. The deck, around 0.625 inches thick, was increased to a thickness of 1 inch in raised profiled areas that corresponded to the positions of the milling machine column and the secondary bed on which the grinder and lathe sat. The lower section of the base, 0.625 inches thick, was connected to the top by a series of plates that created compartments that housed the switchgear, and main and suds pump motors for the lathe and milling machine, a motor to drive the table of the grinder - with the remaining spaces used for storage.
Continued:
Lathe:
Of modest capacity, with just an 8" swing and 18" between-centres, lathe element of the Universal had an all-geared head that gave spindle speeds of 58, 92, 137, 198, 300, 470, 707 and 1020 rpm. driven by a 3 h.p., 1760 r.p.m. 3-phase motor. Surprisingly, the spindle had a bore of just 0.75", hardly adequate for the sort of work the machine might have been called upon to perform. A simplified screwcutting and feeds gearbox was fitted that offered a good range of threads between 4 and 100 t.p.i. Metric pitches were also available, but details of their inclusion into the gearbox, or of the necessary conversion set, are not known. A separate power shaft was used to provide sliding and surfacing feeds, so leaving the leadscrew exclusively for screwcutting.
Milling machine:
Of ingenious construction, but very limited in the size of work it could tackle, the milling machine had a vertical head built into the horizontal arbor support - it being a matter of simply swivelling it through 90° to bring it into operation. The working surface of the 6-speed power-driven table was 26" x 6" with a longitudinal travel of 10" a cross of 5.5" - and the knee able to be elevated through some 10". The No. 40 international spindle ran at 48 to 970 rpm in horizontal mode and from 77 to 1575 rpm when used vertically.
Grinding Machine:
Able to be swung 45 degrees clockwise and 15 degrees anti-clockwise, the universal grinding machine table was mounted parallel to the lathe bed and used the latter as mount for its wheel head. Two gears connected the head to controls at the front of the machine. The maximum swing over the table was 7" and the largest job that could be accommodated was 6.5" in diameter and 10" long. For internal grinding - the maximum capacity was a hole 4-inches in diameter - with the wheel head being swivelled through 180 degrees to bring to the attachment to the front. Tool and cutter grinding was also possible, with a variety of attachments available including a special Universal Cutter Head to mount on the table in place of the standard workhead. Surface grinding was accomplished by mounting a platform on the standard table and attaching a magnetic chuck to it; an extension was also fitted to the standard wheel head to bring the stone forward and so increase its coverage. The coolant supply to the grinding head was a separate unit, designed (of course) to avoid contaminating the other coolant (supplied to lathe, miller and drill) with abrasive particles.
Drill:
Mounted at the back of the lathe's "headstock", the drill (with a maximum table capacity of 15" in diameter) had six speeds from 420 to 5000 r.p.m. with power supplied by a separate 0.5 hp motor. Unfortunately, the designer had specified a hopelessly inadequate No. 1 Morse taper in the quill, so restricting the machine to light-duty work only. Not what you want when faced with getting a 3/4-inch hole though 4-inch thick block of steel.
Before you rush out to find one of these beautifully-made machines for your 12' x 12' wooden-floored workshop, it is as well to bear in mind that they weigh a not inconsiderable 4000 lbs (1.78 tons) and enjoy little beyond the capacity of machine tools found in the average experimental and model-engineer's workshop. Even so, it must remain a tempting proposition.
