FLASH NO MORE

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 13773, 16 October 1942, Page 8

FLASH NO MORE

AEROPLANE BLADES

REDUCING GLARE

East Hartford, Conn., Aug. 29

The flash of metal propeller blades is gone for the duration of the war — experiments having shown that a dull black-painted blade reduces visibility to the enemy and also produces less reflected glare for the pilot. The tips of the blades are painted yellow as a safety measure when planes arc on the ground. Hamilton Standard Propellers Division of United Aircraft Corporation builds, it is said, approximately three-fourths of the propellers used in combat and training planes by the United States and Great Britain and its engineers sought a short-cut for this additional task.

They found it in the use of a con-veyer-type spraying process. An endless-chain conveyor takes the blades through chambers in which the several operations in the paint job are carried out. By this method painted blades can be turned out at the rate of one every minute, the entire operation requiring 41 minutes.

In the first chamber the blades are cleaned in hot, vaporised tricolethylene which removes all grease and dirt. Next the blades pass into a chamber where blowers dry and cool them.

A priming coat of zinc chromide is sprayed on in the third compartment, with excess paint being recovered for reclamation. They next pass through a drying chamber with a temperature of ICO degrees Fahrenheit and are then cooled by blowers.