Abstract: The machine carries out the operations of roughening, reducing, straightening and the like on soles for footwear. The sole is automatically transferred under a processing unit by a carrier moving stepwise and provided with a plurality of driving blocks. A fixed stroke actuator comprises a pegged disc connected by mechanical transmission to the carrier. A bolt locks the carrier and arrests the carrier in the forward motion. During the return course of the actuator, the driving blocks withdraw from the sole.

Abstract: A turntable rotatable about a vertical axis X supports a carriage slidable thereacross; two templates, with profiles respectively conforming to those of a pair of shoes whose uppers or vamps are to be roughened along a peripheral edge folded about an insole, are part of a stack which is mounted on the carriage and is releasably coupled with a shaft journaled in an overhanging, horizontally movable beam. The shaft carries a base frame of a shoe-supporting unit with heel and toe clamps for gripping a shoe whose vamp is to be roughened and which alignedly overlies the corresponding template; this template is contacted by a feeder which is carried on the free end of a horizontally swingable arm also supporting a rotary roughening brush whereby the latter follows the motion of the feeler during translatory shifts of the carriage and 180.degree. rotations of the turntable to work the entire peripheral vamp edge of the shoe.