Transporting Vital Means for Production
Page 16
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ONE of the vital war-time jobs entrusted to road transport is the movement of tools from factory to factory. This task has become heavier as the vast_., scheme of production dispersal has grown, and to-day hundreds of precision tools, fixtures and gauges are carried by road motors.
The non-technical mind rarely grasps the true import of these loads, which are of the highest value. The tooling costs of many British aircraft amount to over a million pounds sterling, and a thousand skilled manand machine-hours often go to the making of a single todl. Many fixtures and references are held to tolerances of + .0005 in., whilst a careless chip in the cutting edge of a press tool may knock 50,000 components off the life of the equipment. Needless to say, the production potential of these tools is enormous, and we urge every possible care in handling such loads, being, as they are, veritable war-winners.
Referring again to press tools, the uninitiated invariably seize the top bolster only to find half the tool still on the floor. Happy to discover the tool to be only half as heavy as it looked, they return later for the lower half, and either put them together carelessly or leave them apart, in any case inviting damage to the cutting faces.
Risk of 'Distortion Must be Avoided Care in slinging and stowing tools is essential to avoid distortion. Watch should be kept for loose index pins, clamp plates and slipbushes, which should be secured to the parent jib. Nothing is more exasperating to the consignee than to have to make these details before production can begin.
Accurate locating faces should be protected with wood or sacking ; cutting tools should be wrapped and taped, and the only safe method of carrying milling cutters and broaches is in boxes stuffed with wood wool. Draw-bench rollers are a point to note. These should never be rolled along the ground, but lifted and carried, Any blemish on the faces of rollers and dies Will reappear on the sections produced, causing both sections and tools to be scrapped. Wooden fixtures are equally as important as metal ones and should never be tossed on to or off the vehicle. Machined metal faces should be greased and the load well protected by tarpaulins.
Organization Can Prevent Serious Damage Whilst we realize that many of these precautions are equally the province of tool store and dispatch departments, we advise the haulier to give all the co-operation he can. We know of entire contracts involving partly finished , fuselage's and subsidiary units, tools and drawings, raw materials and finished components being removed hundreds of miles by road without a hitch. On the other hand, we have seen tools and fixtures handled in a., manner likely to •drive any engineer crazy. There is no adequateexcuse_ for this beyond sheer ignorance of the comparatively deliCate nature of the loads handled. In this work mere size counts for nothing, the largest items may actually be the most delicate: so far as the possibility of serious damage is concerned.
The Aeronautical Inspection Directorate and other Government Departments demand the highest class of product, and this can come only from faultless tools. Road vehicles possess particular advantages in reaching out-of-the-way factories and no other form of transport is better fitted for the task. By noting our comments, hundreds of skilled man-hours will be saved and, quite probably, hostilities brought to a successful issue appreciably sooner. What is equally important, road transport will once more show its ability to accept and keep the Nation's trust.