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 Morris Motors Ltd. discussing the manufacturing costs of valves and gearboxes.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 128\1\ scan0321 | |
| Date | 7th April 1938 | |
| 1104 Rm{William Robotham - Chief Engineer}2/R.{Sir Henry Royce} 7th April, 1938. W.R. Boyle, Esq., Messrs. Morris Motors Ltd., Engines Branch, Gosford Street, COVENTRY. Dear Mr. Boyle, Many thanks for your letter of the 5th April. The costing information is of great interest to me. After seeing your method of manufacturing valves, there is one more question about cost which I would like to ask; how much do you estimate that a valve, similar to that illustrated in the attached drawing, should cost up to the stage when it is ready to start machining? I presume that you are using a silchrome steel for your inlet valves, if it is something less costly I would be interested to know this also. I am going over the gearbox drawings which you so kindly let me have to see if, by any chance, we can use your tooth form and helix angle. I would be very interested to talk to Mr. Harriman because the basic fact that we want to get at is, what percentage of the total cost of the box do you save by substituting shaving for grinding ? If we could get hold of this figure we could make a definite decision as to whether it was going to pay us to eliminate grinding, or not. The next step would be to find out the cost of the experiment, presuming we have to buy the necessary shaving racks and other equipment and we could presume on somebody's good nature sufficiently to make the gears for us when we had the tackle. If Mr. Harriman could possibly gives us the basic figure as to how much per cent of the box cost we might hope to achieve, we should know whether to bother | ||