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).
Visit to Qualcast Works to observe their casting processes for high chromium iron alloy and lawn mowers, with conclusions for Rolls-Royce operations.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 148\5\ scan0165 | |
| Date | 31th May 1937 guessed | |
| (sheet 3) An interesting undertaking at the Qualcast Works was a special shop that has been put up to produce castings from a very high chromium iron alloy, a sort of semi-steel. The percentage of chromium is twice that normally used for stainless materials and the castings are for the furnace portions of slow combustion, cooking stoves and grids, and gratings and such parts as are subject to corrosion under high temperature. The firm making the stoves tried to get these pieces produced in England instead of Sweden. They were unsuccessful however in getting satisfactory castings from any of the better known companies. The Qualcast Co. undertook the work and installed a three phase three arc electric furnace for the purpose. It took them six months of development before they were ready to start on a production basis, and 12 months before they started making any profit. We saw one cast tapped off from the furnace. The container holds 30 cwts and the temperature at which the furnace is tapped is 1700°F.{Mr Friese} The container is provided with a valve and is carried by an overhead crane over each mould in turn. We also visited the lawn mower shop which turns out not less than 3000 mowers a week. Practically the whole of this work is done with girl labour. CONCLUSION. As a result of this visit we should like to see what recommendations can be put up by the Rolls-Royce officials who attended, namely Messrs. Walker and Branson in connection with the foundry, Mr Goodall in connection with inspection, and Mr Naylor on the question of costs. There is no doubt of course that a considerable amount of our work is right outside of this sphere of the Qualcast operations, but something of what we saw should be helpful and applicable to certain branches of our work. In connection with the more complicated Rolls-Royce castings, we are making every effort by holding post mortems between the foundry, inspection, experimental and design, both in the foundry and in the drawing office, and by having sample sets of cores made up for use in the drawing office to take the uncertainty out of the job, and to make the design of such parts a more exact science. I believe we are making progess in this direction. The Vauxhall Co's casting design is considered by Qualcast to be very good in this respect. At the same time we should like to see more use made of metal castings and coreboxes and to this end we are pushing on strenuously with the policy of maintaining and increasing the interchangeability of features of the chassis programme. The possibilities in this direction do not unfortunately assist the | ||