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A Brief History of Lang

John Lang & Sons, Johnstone was founded in 1874 by John Lang and his two Sons John and Robert in Johnstone near Glasgow, Scotland.  The company soon became Renowned for Lathe manufacture and the quality of the castings from the Lang foundry.  Lang continued to expand and flourished due to the in house innovations in product, process and factory design along with production techniques.  The Lang Lathe name came to be regarded along side the best German machines of the time for quality and reliability.  The Company grew and in it's heyday employed 800 people shipping 100s of machines a month world wide.  The innovation continued with hydraulic copying, hydraulic pre-selector gearboxes and continual model improvement and operational features.

Wickman Group. The Wickman group was, in the 1960s and 1970s, a fast expanding forward thinking company. The group expanded by buying Engineering companies with a proven heritage and complimentary products. Wickman purchased Lang and continued the Production of modern machines in Johnstone.  Lang continued to pioneer and was one of the first to deliver a Numerically controlled machine to the market with the Numericon.  Around this time Wickman bought the John Stirk & Sons company of Halifax, England.

John Stirk & Sons commonly known of as Stirks were an established machine tool manufacturer.  Stirks had evolved to be a manufacturer of very large machine tools, notably Planers, Planer millers and special purpose machines.   .

Norman Hargreaves Machine Tools, commonly know of as Hargreaves and NHK were based in Keighley, England.  Hargreaves bought the Lang company which included Lang Gisholt Machine Co. Ltd, Wickman Lang, Wickman Stirk, Wickman Centre Lathes and Stirk Lang Company.  This included the trade names, Drawings, Design Data, Manufacturing records, Parts, Castings, Bespoke tooling, Sales literature and Documentation.  Hargreaves ran an office in Scotland for a number of years before moving the Company to the head quarters in Keighley, England.  Hargreaves refurbished Lang, Wickman and Stirk machine variants and supplied Parts and Service along side the Core Manufacturing and re-Engineering of Machine Tools business.

Seymour Engineering Ltd  In 1994 Seymour bought the entire Lang business from Hargreaves. Seymour continued to supply spares, service, refurbishment, re-engineering and technical support for these machines from the original drawings and design data and we continue to do so to this day.

Lang Today

Seymour Engineering is the only source of GENUINE replacement parts for Lang, Wickman Lang and Stirk Centre and turret lathes. Original drawings, manuals along with original design and build information for these products enables Seymour Engineering to supply expert services and quality products for these machines. From your serial number we can identify your machine and supply all parts for it. Many items are in stock or can be manufactured from the original drawings in a timely manner. We can carry out any work required or give technical help on installing the parts supplied.

Locating Your Serial Number

On many machines the Serial number for your machine is usually found in one of two places, as shown below. This number will enable us to locate your exact machine specification in our files.

Not all machines have their numbers here.  It could have been stamped somewhere more convenient.  Original Lang Lathe serial numbers were 5 numbers, This then changed to the format ##X## 2 numbers, one letter and 2 more numbers. Later machines the number format changed again.  If you can not find the serial number then take some pictures of your machine and send them to us.  If you send 5 pictures, all 4 sides and the headstock, to start with this will greatly help, send the following;

• The Headstock
• The whole Front of the Machine
• The whole Back of the Machine
• The Headstock end
• The Tailstock end