Machine for roughing side walls portions of a shoe

Machine for roughing side wall portions of a shoe comprising:

• a shoe support, for supporting a shoe with side wall portions thereof to be roughed exposed;
• a rotary roughing tool supported by a tool support and comprising a plurality of roughing elements mounted for movement in a direction towards and away from the centers of rotation of the tool, the arrangement being such that said elements are urged centrifugally away from said center by the rotation of the tool;
• means for effecting relative movement, in directions extending lengthwise, widthwise and heightwise of the bottom of a shoe supported by the shoe support, between the shoe support and the tool support, whereby the tool is caused to operate progressively along the exposed side wall portions of a shoe supported by the shoe support;
• first operator-actuatable means, operable in a "teaching" mode of operation of the machine, whereby the tool can be positioned at a plurality of selected points along the side wall portions of the shoe and such tool positions can be stored in the form of digitised coordinate axis values in a computer memory;
• and
• second operator-actuatable means, also operable in said "teaching" mode, for selecting a speed of rotation for the tool in association with each of said stored positions and for storing the selection in the computer memory, the arrangement being such that the stored positions represent the path of relative movement between the shoe support and the tool support to be followed in an "operating" mode of the machine, and each stored selection of the speed of rotation of the tool is implemented when its associated stored position is reached.