pantograph scaling

a miniature maker I follow needed to make some scale (1/8th) drawer-front brass plates, he made a full sized template and set an old pantograph machine fitted with a small bit/cutter/engraver to the scale required and great looking parts were produced,, Yes I have access to one of these old beast, thinking now I have something else to try,,  maybe hinges, engine labels.. I could also see this might work just to mark lines before sawing out the part..

I have an old New Hermes pantograph type engraving machine, works great for nameplates, but I  never thought to use it for other parts. Are you thinking of using it to cut outlines of parts through a plate? 

I'm thinking it would be a good line marking method if you have repetive parts,, instead of trying to mark the lines by hand or gluing on a paper pattern..

The pantograph engraver is a very useful tool especially one that can do three dimensional shapes, I have a very old David Dowling one that can do this.
I made the motion cover emblems for my 3" scale Ruston Proctor Steam Tractor with mine, I borrowed the original ones of the full size engine to use as a master for copying at ¼ scale.






Phil P

Thats really clever - didn't know they made ones like that. Very different base than the usual engraving version like I have. I've seen big duplicating setups for routers used to make multiples of wooden parts like carousel horse blanks (very old machine too).

Great parts!

The complex miniature emblems have come out very finely by that method of machining them.  Interesting to see the picture of the 3" model directly alongside the actual tractor : a quarter scale working model is physically quite a large beast, but I would have found it hard to be sure of the model's scale when seen out in the open air in such proximity to the prototype.  Dave