The Ingold Fraise- anyone here use one?

[Ophiuchus]

Whiskeybelly, I was serious when I said above these could be replicated. For all intensive purposes, it is a very simple hand tool- only the fraise profile itself is a bit difficult.

I am dead positive I can replicate these. I just would first need a very high DPI scan against a white background of a large set of fraises. Actually, if I had a scan of one exceptionally intact larger fraise, perhaps one that was never used from the factory, I could scale it proportionately in a CAD program I have access to at a local college. I've been using it there lately to reproduce an old technical drawing quite successfully of Mudge's first lever escapement from the book mentioned above in preparation for a larger working escapement model.

The program can near infinitely resize an image imported into a parts file without any distortion- it seems to treat it as a vector image. I took my scan of Mudge's escapement from about 8 inches wide up to 1,500,000,000 inches (for slight rotation of the drawing to exactly parallel to my working grid) and back with no distortion whatsoever. I could easily convert a fraise profile in an afternoon into a scaled exact set of fraises of any size!

The workable problems are these:

1. The fraise must be as little used as possible, as it would be the "master" profile for all subsequent fraises. As new never used from the factory if such a fraise, possibly from a collection, could be found.

2. Since more than one company had made these, they may not all have an exactly identical profile design. They should, but my concern is that larger fraises have more internal "ribs", and smaller ones have less, as their proportional size may dictate. I would need a scan of a full set to confirm this/work around it if this is so.

3. I would need to determine how the fraises are sized- I've heard of something called a "Carpano number" to do this, but I'm not sure. I know the Carpano family were Italian gearmakers, so this may be something. I am still translating the fraise selection instructions from the auction box picture. Someone with a micrometer and a full set of fraises may be able to help, but the box also seems to list the diameter or something for all those fraises. I may be able to use that.

4. I would need a skilled watchmaker to assess the final product, someone who has used them before and can thus judge the final result of their action as good or bad. Someone like Roger Smith, David Walter, Andreas Strehler, or another member who frequents Tempered, and has likely done high enough level work as to have used an Ingold fraise in the past at length.


If these could be satisfied, I would need to gather funds to have a good EDM shop cut these profiles for me, and harden them myself. I would donate the first set to whomever we find for #4 to give feedback on their operation.

I am not a watchmaker or tool and die maker professionally (yet), but I'm sure I have more than enough background to successfully revive a dead hand tool to a working incarnation from scratch if the above things could be satisfied.

[horomancer]

Is there actually a cutting ridge on the pinions? I was under the impression that the pinion of the Ingold Fraise acted as a burnisher to bring the final finish up after conventional cutting and polishing.

[whiskeybelly]

Ophiuchus- I just bought the largest set of Ingold fraises I've ever seen, 60 cutters! They are being shipped, but from the photos look very nice. I'm interested in your idea of reproducing them, like you said wire EDM should be ideal.

The neat thing with wire EDM is you could easily make them out of carbide, and it may be interesting to even forgo the 'teeth' inside the leaves and just run the EDM at a higher rate of burn; the finish I've seen on rough burned EDMed pieces would make an excellent rasp. Would make an interesting experiment at any rate.

The finish left from an Ingold fraise is not polished, it is simply more refined than what's left straight from the profile cutter, and perhaps most importantly the cutting marks from the Ingold fraise are radial which greatly reduces friction. Will let you know when they come in.

[Curtis]

Hi Whiskey,

Can't wait to see the pics when you get it and your thoughts after using it.

Congrats on the find!

Cheers,

Curtis

[Paul Loatman]

[Ophiuchus]

I definitely can try. I reasoned that EDM would be the most efficient way of doing this, since many, many custom broaches would need to be made for each fraise in a set otherwise, especially a 60 fraise set!

I stand by my original idea- I can revive this tool. I have a 4 axis mill, and know a tool geometry engineer that could assist if I really needed help.

My only fear is how expensive the EDM costs for a full 60 fraise set would be. I don't have much money now, the recession has wiped out most of my savings. For a single set, though, EDM would probably be
the most economical. If any design I create is proven successful, and enough people wanted one, I could run on barstock formed cutters, possibly of sintered carbide (tool engineer works with a major US company,
dealing with sintered carbide tooling), and basically cut 10-20 fraises of the same size at a time from a bar.

If best case scenario allows, and the profile could be considered proportionally scalling down, a single or a handful of cutters, engaged at differing depths, could produce an entire set of fraises with minimal machining
setup cost.

I have never used an Ingold's fraise, but I can see how rare they are, how fundamentally simple the form is, and how much it could benefit horologists if it were resurrected. Most of all, I want to try this
because I love hand tools, and it is unacceptable to me that such a simple but extremely useful precision adding tool such that could easily be ressurected should fall into near extinction. For those of us wanting to
handmake our wheels, and those that do, this could be extremely useful in adding further precision. I see no reason why this tool should cease to exist, or be unavailable to those who could really use one.

This can be done, and I'm willing to try. My only worry now is funds, but we'll see what happens.

Whiskeybelly, I am overjoyed that you found such a large, complete set. I hope it's in good condition, and if you can, I'd love to use your set as the base profile. We'll discuss details later.

On a side note, another member also acquired 2 sets supposedly, and has asked my shipping address to send them to me to further this project. I don't mean to offend that person, but I have seen no posts
from them, and the wording they chose leaves me a bit suspect of their intentions. I'd prefer not to give out my address to anyone unless I get to know them better.

Thanks to everyone who's commented here, I've never attempted anything like this before, but I'm positive I can do it. We'll just see how things go!

[Paul Loatman]

Whiskeybelly,

Did you ever try out your set, and did you ever get pictures of it?

I was thinking of these more recently, and i started to think of why they're used, it's to polish the teeth obviously, so i thought of some other method of polishing the teeth in a similar pattern and ended up coming up with the below picture.



It's just a steel bit with a spring attached which is curved to fit the curve of the tooth surface, you would turn the wheel and the polishing thingy would pass by all the teeth and it would (theoretically) polish the whole running surface. I could make this fairly easily and i think i may try it, the spring portion doesn't have to be a direct part of the polishing bit, it could easily be fastened instead, that way the polishing surface can be left harder than the spring, adjustment of the angle could easily be done by turning the other end of the spring and the whole assembly could be held together in a similar way as the Ingold Fraise, just a depthing tool sort of thing that holds the wheel from one end that allows it to spin freely and then the polishing tool could be held at the other end.

More importantly, the tool would be very difficult to jam in the teeth unlike an Ingold Fraise, which could easily jam if the incorrect cutter is chosen and used. It would be much easier to create what i've designed above as well, especially if the spring is made as a separate unit, then you would only need to make each of the polishing surfaces at whatever curvature you would need to fit a wheel you want to polish.

Anyone see any problems with this? I'd like some feedback because i'll be attempting to make some of these for my watch in a few weeks when i finally get back to that project.

Thanks,

-Paul
_________________
-Paul

[Ophiuchus]

Paul, good to see someone still thinking about these. I never got any pictures from Whiskeybelly, so gave up.

I would be able to design cutters with even a single good flat on profile picture of one cutter. I have 3D parametric modeling software on my laptop, and could quickly produce proof of concept designs and post them.

Without a picture clearer than the drawing in my Daniel's Watchmaking book, I can't do much.

I am still interested in this as a project, if only for the fact that someday soon I will need a set of Ingold's fraises, and near zero chance of ever finding a full good set for sale.

Paul, I like the design, but I worry that it cannot work. The fraise actually cuts through a burnishing shearing action, engaging all teeth progressively like a flat gear hob, as far as I can tell. Spring pressure would vary the cutting pressure too randomly between teeth, and without the perfect repeating radial engagement of the fraise, there is too much variability in the cutting action of something like this.

I'm still sure the fraises are dead simple, I just need a few good pictures of a full set.

[Paul Loatman]

[Jacob Sobell]

I seem to recall reading some time ago that Romain Gauthier mills his tooth profiled out of his wheel instead of using a gear cutter. This leaves the cutter marks in the direction of the power flow instead of the little "speed bumps" left by perpendicular cutting as seem traditionally. This should negate the need for the Ingold Fraise to clean up the tooth finish.

[Ophiuchus]

Jacob, what you say makes sense- however, I can't imagine what such small milling cutters would look like. I worked as a machinist before I went to watchmaking, and can't imagine the size of an endmill needed to cut between the smallest of gear teeth. I've seen endmills for sale that went down to 0.010", but you'd need something smaller than that.

That method, I also can't imagine how accurate the gears would be- CNC would be needed, and circular interpolation limits come into play with arcs and circles, especially of that size.
I would be very curious to see how machining these would ever be accurate to the degree of traditional hobbed teeth.

If there is a CNC in existence even now with a stepping resolution, or even encoder resolution capable of the ridiculously small movement needed for that method, it would be absurdly expensive, even for CNC, far beyond the means of most companies, let alone watchmakers. For me at least, not possible. Do you have a link to Mr. Gauthier's methods?

Properly made fraises are simpler, and Paul's idea may even be ideal as well.
Of course the ultimate would be gear creation using LIGA, but that's also impractical.

[Paul Loatman]