A few nice high speed machining images I found:
DSC_0082
Image by funnelbc
Shot taken at the Melbourne Museum of Printing (www.printingmuseums.com). It’s an amazing facility and these shots are just a fraction of the stuff they have.
Miscellaneous wood type. Tip: if you’re looking for display type on ebay, be wary as some antiques dealers treat the timber to make it look bettter, but it can ruin the printing surface.
DSC_0061
Image by funnelbc
Shot taken at the Melbourne Museum of Printing (www.printingmuseums.com). It’s an amazing facility and these shots are just a fraction of the stuff they have.
This is a Ludlow type making machine. The type is locked into a matrix mold and then a mixture of Tin, Antimony & Lead is squirted up from the crucible to form lines of type (slugs). The Antimony is the ingredient which causes the hot metal to set almost instantly. Within 20-30 seconds it’s cool enough to hold the slugs.
The Ludlow machines were more commonly used to set headlines as the Linotype machines had limitations of the maximum size type that could be run. According to one of the MMOP guys, some smaller places who couldn’t afford a linotype machine would set all their type on these.