Top Secret Pictures – How Rupes Bigfoot Polishers are made!


As far as I know, in the history of Rupes, no one has ever been given permission to take pictures inside the Rupes manufacturing facilities.


Note this picture...



And in case you missed it, I've cropped out the pertinent part....




To be clear, I was only allowed to take pictures in about 1/3 of their facilities. The other 2/3 are completely restricted from cameras.

One portion of these other two areas I was given a tour of and all I can say is what I saw was very impressive. There was another area that is 100% restricted to anyone without company credentials to enter and that's perfectly okay as I'm very thankful for their gracious permission to take pictures in the manufacturing portion of their plant.

I'd like to thank Presidente Guido Valentini and all of the rest of the staff at Rupes for their trust in both myself and Jason and we respect that trust and our relationship and the only pictures I will post are the pictures I was given permission to take and share at this time.


Here you can see a line of polisher heads with motors being installed.








Here's polisher bodies attached to the heads of polisher units.




Here you can see the drive gear for the head gears as well as the rear bearing installed.




In this picture you can see the drive assembly, drive assembly housing and backing plates have been installed.




Close-up pictures of the drive gears. These are stainless steel, precision ground and heat treated for long life and quiet performance.





Rupes invented and manufactures their own electric motors which are famous for their efficiency.




Polisher bodies with wiring and electrical controls installed.




Empty tool bodies ready for assembly....




Assembled tool bodies with lubrication grease being added to the drive assembly housing.




Counterweight assemblies with bearings installed...




These are machining marks for balancing purposes which equates to long life and low vibration under operation.




Coil windings ready to be assembled to tool bodies




Every component is made and assembled at the Rupes factory.




There are multiple machining processes on assembly lines and each process has redundant quality control measures in place to ensure exact tolerances and specifications are maintained.