From the Rolls-Royce experimental archive: a quarter of a million communications from Rolls-Royce, 1906 to 1960's. Documents from the Sir Henry Royce Memorial Foundation (SHRMF).
The difficulties of manipulating and welding a specific type of steel ('Staybrite') for parts manufacturing.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 154a\1\ scan0047 | |
| Date | 30th December 1925 | |
| - 2 - The special fields that Messrs Firths are exploiting with this "steel" are the domestic and chemical factories where it has very big advantages. In regard to its manipulation, it is not nearly as easy as Dr.Hatfield implies. We have tried it and find that for welding, brazing, soldering, and cold working it is very difficult, and therefore the results are not reliable. In fact, our Experimental Department have turned it down for welding and soldering, but if clearances are kept very close, i.e. in the neighbourhood of .0005, it will dip braze, but even in this case not too readily. We have in hand already an experiment for using it for exhaust pipes and silencers, but our difficulty has been in obtaining drawn tube. The Chesterfield Tube Company have been working for nearly a year on drawing it for seamless tubes, but in the order we placed for exhaust tubes, a size they were working on before, we found the thickness varied in the drawn tube from .031 to .095. We had the Works Manager of the Tube Company over, to discuss it, and he said it was difficult to handle. He agreed we could not use the tubes supplied, and is trying a new method to obtain more reasonable results. We cannot get ordinary Tube People to bend or manipulate the tubes for us, and here again the Chesterfield Company have, at Messrs Firths'request, stepped in to try and fill the gap. We had already given them a drawing of our petrol tank to try and draw an oval tube for same, as we had failed altogether to produce a tank at the Works from sheet. I have written fully on the subject in order to make clear that we had been trying to utilize "Staybrite" for many months, but had failed due to the fact that it cannot readily be worked cold, as it hardens up very quickly under deformation effects, and could not even be folded to form our usual petrol tank folded soldered joint reliably. BY.{R.W. Bailey - Chief Engineer} [Signature] | ||