Jerry:
Pantography is a method for copying using the parallelogram device already shown in a previous post. It can either reproduce, enlarge, or diminish an image. In the case of bicycles and their metal parts, the image was engraved.
Newer, computerized devices can do the same engraving by other means. Technically this is not pantography, but, in reality, we have six of one and half a dozen of another.
I'm sure many members know engravers, both here and in Europe, who employ both methods-the results are the same. Any bike part, big or small, can be engraved-sometimes a jig must be made for an unusually shaped part. It's very interesting to see.
Regards, George
George Hollenberg MD
CT, USA
> Actually, I'm familiar with the original meaning of pantograph
> as a mechanical linkage for reproducing a drawing or diagram,
> or by extension, a reproduction produced by such a device.
> However the original meaning is nonsense when applied to bicycle
> parts. I think the extension to bicycle parts would be to apply
> the term to a machine tool of some type which which reproduced
> an engraved pattern in the part from a physical pattern via a
> mechanical linkage, i.e. the macine at the neighborhood hardware
> store for making copies for you door or car key would be a
> "pantographer" by this corruption of the original meaning.
>
> I may be wrong, but I would doubt that many "pantographed"
> parts are today produced by machine tools which use a physical
> pattern and a mechanical linkage. Rather I suspect the machines
> engraving these parts are electronically controlled to reproduce
> an electronically stored pattern. So at this point, the actual
> process has become so far removed from the original meaning as
> to render the word, as so applied, meaningless. Such a process
> is no more "pantographing" than screen printing on a water
> bottle of an electronically stored image using an electronically
> controlled device. Neither process is "pantographing" in
> anything remotely like the original meaning of the term.
>
> I suppose some might say modern automated machine engraving is
> "pantographing" because such engravings were once produced by a
> process which used to be commonly called "pantographing" even
> though this was then already a massive corruption of the
> original meaning of the word. That would make about the same
> amount of sense as saying that a modern photocopier is a
> "pantograph" because it reproduces documents on paper like those
> once produced by by a pantograph device. Actually the
> photocopier is probably more properly called a pantograph than
> the modern engraving machine, as the original pantograph in fact
> reproduced documents on paper, not engravings in metal.
>
> So I suspect that, aside from some really antique machine
> tools still in use in some tiny shops in Italy, or maybe some
> KOF framebuilders whose love of traditional methods extends to
> antique machine tools, there is no such thing as a
> "pantographed" bike part being produced today, and so if one
> insists on being accurate, the term is now completely
> meaningless as applied to bicycles. And once a word has lost
> its correct meaning, I suppose it can be used to mean whatever
> the user wants it to mean. And so Lewis Carrol was right all along.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jerry "Start at the beginning and go on until you come to the
> end, then stop" Moos
> Big Spring, Texas, USA
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> Calvert Guthrie wrote:
> Tom, &al.....
>
> For any who aren't already familiar with this applet demo.
>
>
> http://www.ies.co.jp/
>
>
> It gives you a quick visual of why pantographs work so well.
>
> On the biz end you may afix a pencil or a plasma torch.
>
> A rotary graver was the norm for jewelry and bicycle
>
> components. These days "pantographing" more likely
>
> gets done digitally with a CNC plotter.
>
>
> The inexpensive wooden drafting pantos are still handy
>
> for any scale-up jobs larger than your printer or scanner.
>
> Some of our classic rides & components may have begun
>
> as an idea sketched out on a scrap of paper in a pub. Back
>
> at the pattern drafting office it could be scaled up using
>
> the shop's workhorse wooden panto. These were usually
>
> bolted at one end to a large flat table and suspended from
>
> the ceiling, just above the paper, w/string & a gum band.
>
>
> The Dies used to make stamped metal head badges came
>
> from a plaster or wood model scaled down using a panto-
>
> graph. Sometimes the pantograph used is one of the
>
> lathe variety. It's mighty elegant in the way it works but it
>
> would take another screen demo applet to explain it.
>
>
> BTW:
> Anyone got a few tapered collets for an H.P. Preiss 2d Panto?
>
> Calvert Guthrie
> Kansas City
> Missouri
> USA
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> _______________________________________________
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George Hollenberg MD
CT, USA