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 detailing a discussion with Messrs Aubert & Duval regarding the suboptimal steel composition used for crankshafts.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 146\1\ scan0116 | |
| Date | 2nd December 1937 | |
| Strictly private & confidential. To Rm.{William Robotham - Chief Engineer} Derby Copy to By.{R.W. Bailey - Chief Engineer} Levallois Sr.I/ET.2.12.37 1243 You will remember that, when I was last in Derby, a question was brought up about Messrs Aubert & Duval's letter of the 24th December 1936, translated copy of which was sent to you. In this letter they stated that, in their opinion, the composition of the steel utilised by us for our crankshafts was unfavourable and, by altering same, better results could be obtained. It was suggested that I should go and see these people and find out what their ideas were on this subject. I have just returned from an appointment I had with the Manager on the Technical side of Messrs. Aubert & Duval, who struck me as being a highly capable person. His knowledge of the question of steels of different compositions and the nitriding of same appeared to me to be so formidable that I had very little to say in the matter and was very glad that I started off by telling him that I knew nothing about this particular subject, apart from general knowledge. The result of our conversation, however, strikes me as being very interesting and, although you probably know all about this question at the Works, I feel it my duty to tell you, in as few words as possible, what Monsieur Billardeau told me. He started off by saying very positively that the composition of the metal we use for our crankshafts was absolutely out of date and that no firm in France any longer used it. It had been advocated by themselves in days gone bye, but nowadays they consider it to be so inefficient from a nitriding point of view that they are of the opinion that we must have some quite special reason for sticking to this composition, as they feel sure that we must realise that, as this gentleman finally pointed out, the composition in question goes to make "un mauvais vilebrequin". I do not quite know how to translate this, but literally, as you will grasp, it means "a bad crankshaft". He points out that they have deleted from their compositions the use of nickel, which they know from a very wide experience to be a bad metal to use in a composition of steel which is going to be nitrided. Before going any further in the question, they pointed out that, in view of the fact Messrs. Rolls-Royce Ltd. hold one of their nitriding licences, they were pleased to re-nitride our crankshafts from time to time, when we call upon them to do so, but they did it without any sort of confidence in the ultimate results, owing to the fact of their utter contempt for the composition used by us. | ||