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).
Welding, sealing, material waste, and glazing techniques for vehicle bodies.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 26\1\ Scan190 | |
| Date | 8th February 1957 guessed | |
| -3- Three thicknesses of metal can be welded, but should be avoided whenever possible. The guns are usually set to do two thicknesses, and where there are three thicknesses this means resetting the gun or using a special gun just for that section. Secondly it is not easy with various thicknesses unless the thinner ones are on the outside. Face welding on a "Seelastick" joint is never very satisfactory, because face welding reduces the pressure by spreading the load on the face side, and still more of the pressure is absorbed by the "Seelstick", leaving insufficient pressure to give a first class weld. The initial pressure cannot be increased very much because of severe indentation on the back side. The Americans do all their sealing after all the spot welding is finished. Waste due to Offcuts One of the reasons given for the high cost of the 11 piece door was that the shapes of some of the panels resulted in considerable waste metal. This may have been correct in the case of light alloy, but scrap did not appear to be considered when steel was used. We saw them blanking out of steel strips some L shaped pieces which were blanked out one after the other, producing 4 blanks per strip. If these blanks were arranged alternately on the sheet, each strip would produce 6 blanks. Glazing on the Minx On the bodies that were glazed by P.S.C. the screens and backlights were mounted into a clean aperture, and then sealing compound was injected into the gaps between glass and rubber and between rubber and body by an air operated gun using a flat nozzle. I consider this to be a good method because it makes it an easier and quicker operation to put the screen into the body in its correct place. The glazing rubber on the Minx is similar to that on Siam but at no time did they use clamps when fitting a screen to a body, whereas we find it necessary. With more heavily curved glasses, as on Tibet, we shall have to accept greater discrepancies between the curvature of the glass and the curvature of the aperture, and the glazing rubber will have to be capable of sufficient distortion to absorb these differences. It would therefore seem better to inject the sealing compound into the rubber when it is distorted on the body rather than when it is in its free state on the bench. JCh. AFM{Anthony F. Martindale}/Kt/FM. | ||