FILENAMES: Gack000.jpg Gack100.jpg Gack104.jpg Gack105.jpg Gack108.jpg DESCRIPTION: These are pictures of a lateral shaper. Posted by Hugh Sparks . The following description was provided: ================================================================= These are pictures of what I call a "lateral shaper". It was made in 1955 by the German company: "Ludwig Gack Werkzeug und Maschinen-Fabrik" I've spent the whole summer rebuilding this machine, but I'm not entirely sure what operations it was built to perform. It came with a nice vice for the table and an elaborate dividing head with Schaublin collets and a tailstock. The dividing head has provision for offsetting the head by small increments to get the collet exactly centered. I think the machine may be designed for cutting one-off gears or splines. It can also be used to cut teeth on a pinon that is integral with a larger diameter gear: It can cut right up to a surface and retract the single point cutter upward and away with no overshoot. The cutter is held in the spindle pointing downward. The entire head shifts to the right performing a cut. Then the "spindle" rotates counter-clockwise as the cutting head retracts to the left. This is timed so that the cutter does not overshoot the end of the stroke. The table can be configured to shift in or out by a small increment as set on one of the apron dials. In this mode it functions like a regular shaper when planing a surface. The stroke length is set by offsetting a crank pin bearing inside the machine. The maximum stroke is about 6". If anyone has any information or ideas about the Gack or the German company. please post to rec.crafts.metalworking and/or send mail to: - Hugh Sparks (Thanks)