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).
Letter to High Duty Alloys Ltd. regarding setbacks in developing and casting bearings with new alloys.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 115\5\ scan0139 | |
| Date | 29th September 1938 | |
| Copy. 29th September, 1938. JH/CJR. J.{Mr Johnson W.M.} T. Robinson Esq., Messrs. High Duty Alloys, Ltd., Buckingham Avenue, Trading Estate, Slough. Dear Mr. Robinson, Thanks for yours of the 27th. I shall be delighted for you and Mr. Herrington to come down any time, but do not come this week as I am just trying to get things together with regard to air raid precautions and reservists leaving, and I have got a matter to settle with Bristol, but if you like to come one day next week I shall be pleased to keep any appointment. The position, however, as I see it, is as I wrote in my letter to Rolls. This job is going to take rather longer to get really going than probably any of us thought. We have had three serious setbacks. I cannot say that any of them could have been avoided, but still they have happened. You will remember that in the first place we had many sample sets of bearings cast and some partly machined when it was decided to change from AC.6 to AC.9, and that meant the first lot was all scrapped. Then we ourselves ran into a little unforeseen difficulty. The AC.9 from our experience requires casting differently to the AC.6, and using the AC.9 without any previous experience we ran into porosity trouble, so that the second lot of bearings was scrapped. After overcoming this porosity trouble, which we have entirely overcome now by casting by a different method, we ran into the trouble that even the virgin metal is low in copper and magnesium, so that for the third time everything was scrapped, and we start again. These things, however, are part and parcel of the development of a job, and while it is wasting a lot of time and money we are not grumbling. We have now received the new alloy which is correct to specification, and we are proceeding to execute the various orders on hand. In the meantime the equipment has been laid down | ||