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 discussing bearing development issues and progress with various clients including Dennis, Bristol, and Leylands.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 115\5\ scan0114 | |
| Date | 15th September 1938 | |
| W. Robotham Esq. 15th September, 1938. got difficulties that cannot be overcome, which is of course not the case. Now the second case is Dennis. In Dennis's case they had your people down and I think they have had H.D.A. people down, and Poppe, who as you know is a sort of supercilious individual who knows everything, when he saw the A.C.9 result, said "Oh, you must have A.C.6: that is the only one that is satisfactory." Now it turns out that he tried A.C.6 on an entirely different job, as I understand it, and there it had been perfectly satisfactory, but now he was having A.C.9 bearings cast for an engine which, I believe speaking from memory, has a crank-shaft of 2⅞ whereas it ought to be about 3½, and no bearing in the world will operate under those conditions, but to meet with Poppe's complaint and to try and appear to be helpful, Blackith who was at the interview with your people as well, said "Well, we will give them an A.C.6 bearing" and we immediately cast and machined them one up. This failed on this engine exactly the same as the A.C.9 had failed, proving of course that it was, as you say, an absolute fault in design. Now we are perfectly satisfied with the progress we are making. The only trouble is, are you and H.D.A. satisfied, and if you are will you leave us in peace a little bit to work out our own problems, and we will call upon you and all your technical people and H.D.A. as and when we want them. There is at present some little difficulty with regard to chemical analyses, as to whether we come inside the specification on a job at Napiers, but H.D.A. and ourselves have that matter in hand, and it is quite evident that I have got to get another chemist in my laboratory. This has taken place while the present man is away on his holidays, and I was not in a position to check it over myself so we had to get H.D.A. to do it. It comes down to this, however, if you and H.D.A. are satisfied that we are doing our very best, quietly and steadily to push it along to those people who want a bearing and not a new engine design, then I feel satisfied that in the course of the next six months or so, we shall have built up a business which will be a credit to all of us. Now then, you have had that side of it, let us have a look at the other. The other side is as follows: We have put up bearings to Bristol and they have reported very satisfactorily on their experimental tests, and they have now got it on flying tests, with, I am told, up to the present very promising results. We have done quite a lot of bearings, samples and otherwise,for Leylands, and have got their order for 3,000 sets of bearings which we are now making for them. We have done lots of other trial sets, and generally speaking, apart from this little trouble of porosity at A.E.C. which we have now got over, and the Dennis job. | ||