DOZENS A MINUTE

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 65, Issue 5547, 9 November 1942, Page 4

DOZENS A MINUTE

SHELL PRODUCTION

MILES OF CONVEYORS

A long rod of steel rolls steadily forward under a knife that shears it off into desired lengths at the rate of several dozens a minute—“as fast as we can feed it,” a workman explains —and the volume productions of shells of varying size for use in far-flung war areas is under way.

The scene is in one of the plants of General Motors’ Oldsmobile division that has become one of the great ord-nance-producing factories of the world, making not only shells but guns to fire them from tank-turrets or airplant wings.

The volume of shells rolling out of the plant is a military secret, but it may be said the total runs into multiple thousands daily. Speeding up the output is a conveyor system that spreads over almost every inch of the shell section of the plant. There are miles of conveyors equipped with small cup-shaped devices that hold four or six shells at a time, moving the cold-cut lengths from one stage of machining to the other.

Conveyors stretch the length of the plant with spurs that turn abruptly to the right and left to take the embryo shells to electric furnaces, heattreating tanks, milling machines, broaching and threading stations, and dozens of other operations incilent to converting a piece of rough metal into an explosive shell.

CO-ORDINATED FLOW

It looks like tremendous confusion, but it comes to a co-ordinated flow at the end of the final assembly line and inspection station where every shell is examined critically before being passed along rollers to an automatic packing device. Here the shells are placed in cartoons whose top is folded and sealed automatically and delivered to the point where the Government accepts delivery in a waiting freight car. On the- side of the freight car is a

sign forbidding admittance to any but Ordnance Department workers. You ask one of the guards on duty why the cartoons are packed only two deep on the car floor.

Weight he replies tersely,

Aside from the fashioning and heat treating of the body of the shell, there are nose pieces produced in another section of the plant and delivered on the conveyors to the front of as* sembly.

One of the more complicated pieces of production machinery is a broad flat, oscillating taable that operates directly in front of a furnace and overj an oil-quenching tank. On the table the shells are lined up in rows.

Its operation timed to the second, the table moves forward as the furnace door opens. About a dozen shells in a row are dropped into the furnace for treating. In a few moments the furnace door opens again, the table end moves into the flame and recovers a dozen shells.

SHELLS ARE TEMPERED

Moving backward again, the device tips the end row of heated shells up and drops them into the oil for the tempering stage of the treating operation.

Another fast-working mechanism is a rotary device used in giving the shells a protective coating of paint. The shell is held upright on a spindle and capped with a temporary disc as it moves into the paint-spray area. ’ The paint dries to the j>cjnt whefe the shells can be handled witiim 40 seconds after emerging from ' the spray. Painting is done over a hooded tank of water, so that considerable paint salvaging is possible.

“We skim it off the top of the water and use it again,” a worker explained. Similarly an under-the-floor conveyor system salvages curlings from the shells and gun-machining operations. Except for huge presses hammering out parts for bomber plane landing gears, there is nothing about the operating units of the plant to recall the automobile engine factory of last year.

In a yard outside, however, is a. . spot with 8000 automobile frames piled in neat rows. It was a week’s Supply prior to Pearl Harbour.