THE NEW WAY.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 18674, 24 April 1926, Page 16

THE NEW WAY.

PE7TONE WORKSHOPS. NEW ELECTRICAL MACHINES. (SrZCIAL TO "THB .FBz'sS.") WELLINGTON, April 23. The Bailway Department is now using hydro?electric power from Mangahao, which is being received at 11,000 volts from -KUindallah direct. The current is tlion reduced by transformers, to 400 volts. It then goes to the main switchboard of 2000 amps capat-itv, and from there through a totally enclosed armour-clad switchgear, to the distributing panels for each workshop. All the switchgear is of the latest type, enclosed and armour-dad, the risk of accident to any operators to the minimum. The high tension and-work-shop switch-gear was supplied by the Metropolitan Yickers Compajiy, the transformers by the English Electric Company, and the low tension switchgear by Ferguson and Tallin. The whole .of the. electric work in the l'etone workshops, including the erection and designing ot' tho sub-station, has been carried out by the signals and electrical branch of the New Zealand Railways. t

Two air compressors, of I'2"> h.p. each, now drive all the pneumatic, tools, and have proved most effective in speeding up work. The conversion from steam to electric, drive has been completed in the car and wagon shops, llere there is an electric wheel lathe, where carriage and waggon wheels which have become considerably worn are re-turned. With the old belt drive, only five pairs of wheels could be returned in a day. With the electric drive ten pairs can be put through, ready to go into service again. So powerful is this lathe that it can, if necessary, take off a strip of steel from a quarter lr half an inch thick from the wheel.' Yet it can be adjusted to take off the veriest shaving. The cutting develops tremendous heat, and when thick shavings are taken off the steel turns blue with the heat.

An interesting machine is the-auto-matic saw sharpener, whi(|h sharpens band and circular saws for cutting steel or timber in a fraction of the time they can be done by hand, and there is another ingenious device for setting the saws when sharpened. A big planing machine recently brought out from Home has a Lancashire dynamo drive oil' it. The electrical reverse is a great advance on the old mechanical method.

A 50 h.p. motor drives an electrical bolt-making machine, which can turn out bolts at the rate of five a minute. The man operating, the machine takes the white hot bar' from the furnace, and places it in a slot in the machine. A sharp blow shapes the body of the bolt; the second operator shapes the head, and the third and final movement, chops the bolt off from the bar. The complete operation takes 12 seconds.

A new machine: which is being installed is the aqetono and oxygen gas cutting machine, which will cut through steel bars about three times faster than the quickest saw, and will cut to any pattern; it will shear through four-inch steel almost as a knife will go through cheese.. The Department, has only one. other machine of this kind, which is installed in a South Island workshop. The suction gas plant is still, in use driving some of the other machines, which have,not yet been converted over to electric drive, but in the course of ,i fefr weeks, this plant will be entirely dispensed with, when other lathes and machines will each have their own motors,, thus effecting another-'move forward in the direction of efficiency, speed, and better workmanship.