English: Antique industrial pasta machines designed and built by I. DeFrancisci & Son, 219 Morgan Avenue, Brooklyn, New York. DEMACO in Melbourne, Florida rebuilt these machines in 1998. They were donated to the New York State Museum in Albany, New York in 2005. I. DeFrancisci & Son became Consolidated Macaroni Machinery Corporation in 1927 and then DEMACO in 1952.

Description:

This set of three machines was the state-of-the-art in technology for making pasta around 1915. At the time, pasta making was a batch process, where a specific amount of semolina and water were mixed in the mixer shown in the middle to make dough. Once mixed, the dough was placed in the gramola (kneader) shown on the left, which kneaded the dough as the large bowl rotated and the dough passed under the two large rollers (painted in black in the photo). The chrome wheels above the rollers were used to adjust the height of the rollers. The mechanical press on the right has two side-by-side barrel like cylinders, one for loading and one for extruding. Once kneaded, the dough was cut into strips and placed in the barrel on the right side, and packed with the small ram above the barrel. Once packed, the barrels were swung so the one filled with dough was below the large ram in the center of the press. The large ram then pushed the dough down the barrel creating enough pressure so it passed through a die that formed the shape of the pasta. Once formed, short pasta was placed on trays with screens on the bottom and long pasta, such as spaghetti, was hung on sticks. The trays and sticks of pasta were placed on a cart and put into a drying room.