MOTOR CARS MADE WHILE YOU WAIT

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 196, 8 January 1913, Page 8

MOTOR CARS MADE WHILE YOU WAIT

WONDERFUL TIME - SAVING 1 .MACHINERY. Machines which manufacture fleets of motor cars while you wait are described in the -Scientific American. The article seeks to show that the combine of British manufacturers suggested by I'lin Express could not compete successfully in the small-car market with their American rivals, owing to the wonderful labor and time-saving] machinery in use in American factories. The almost magical growth of ears in an up-to-date American workshop is described as follows: "The future motor-car begins to rise out of the cliaos, not in a single unit, ■but in lots of a thousand or more. "At one end of the huge factory an immense drop forge gives a few loving taps to an unwieldy steel bar, and, lo! a side frame member of the chassis is born. Another forge close by turns out end members, and before you realise it there are a dozen or more complete chassis frames standing beside you." The idea of stamping out a front axle by a single blow is unknown in England, but it has long been in use in America:—

"A little further along the line of huge machines there stands a big force which by a single blow turns out a front axle for the car to (be, the steel bar, of course, having been treated before it reached the machine shop.

''Everywhere stand whole batteries of machines which do nothing all day long but strike a terrific blow every minute or so, or which lift a part to be machined against a multiple drill."

Americans are not satisfied with machines which turn out single units, but insist on machinery which will do a multitude of tasks simultaneously:

"Take, for instance, the multiple drilling. In a single upward movement of the table on which the crankshaft rests thirty-two holes arc drilled simultaneously in less time than it takes to drill a single hole in an ordinary machine from a centre punch mark.

"A little further on one sees a machine which at one time performs three operations on ten different sets of cylinders.

"Far more complicated are the gear- 1 cutting machines, which turn out the finelv-bevelled gears for transmission and driving gears. From a solid chunk of steel fed into them they cut with more than human accuracy the finished bevel gear." Combined with this rapidity of construction, the greatest care is taken to maintain the highest standard of accuracy:—

"While the milling, drilling and cutting machines are wonderfully accurate, the motor-car builder of to-day takes no chances with their infallibility. In another room he has machines which like nothing better than to find fault. There are gauges and balances for testing cylinders and pistons, which reject automatically any and every piston found to be defective or light. "Crankshafts are placed on knife-like edges and turned at every possible angle. They must remain stationary in any position. If they move the fraction of an inch they are rejected as imperfect and out of balance. "The men who do the testing are experts in their line. Supersensitive earb added to highly developed powers of observation enable them to discover imperfections in a motor which the layman could not notice even after they were pointed out to him."