Evening star., 1942-07-05
Flame Is Harnessed
For Vital Jobs in
Arms Plants
New Welding Process
Helps to Speed Up
Tunk Production
BY DAVID J. WILkIE,

DETROIT, July 4.-There is more
Of fact than figure of speech in the
statement that Vulcan has Joined
forces with Mars in the factories of
the one-time automobile industry
speeding the production of the i'm
plements of war.
The mythological god of fire and
OF the arts of forging and smelling
Is surprising in the arms factories
anything the ancient Romans ever
attributed to him.
In one part of huge new arn1a-
ment factory fame has been har-
messed in multiple jets to cut out of
thick steel on a mass basis the giant
gears needed to move great mobile
fortreSSeS.
A few feet away the same type OF
fame jets through running water to
heat. treat and harden the sprocket
tips of these gears. The operations
are almost wholly automatic.
Big Sections Welded.
But in another section of the fac
tory VulcanS fame, controlled by
expert WoTkmen, is Welding together
large sections Of armor plate. This
operation, replacing cold riveting,
not only speeds up production of
the complete vehicle, but, according
to present engineering thought
greatly enhances its useful life and
Its defensive capacity.
Many of the parts fashioned by
the controlled flame have been made
in some factories through the CEN
trifugal casting process, hailed as
one of the greatest of modern ad-
vances in the Woodworking indus
tries.
At the same time most of the
engineers agree that the fame pro-
jected under pressure from tapered
nozzles is a practically indispensable
part Of the war effort.
In one plant building Army tanks
q new method of welding has been
devised. Important in this method
are great fixtures with cradle-llke
framework that can be revolved and
tilted in any direction. They were
conceived so that all welding oper-
ations could be performed on the
massive sections in the essential
down-hand position.
Designed on Ground.
The fixtures were designed and
built within the companys own fac
tories, as were many of the other
large pieces of tooling equipment.
They are, of course. among the many
machine tools that will have no
practical use in the postwar period.
Here again the flame cutters proba-
bly, will come into use to reduce
these industrial Goliaths to scrap
for conversion into material to go
into new peacetime vehicles.
The industry's forging and smelt-
ing plants are functioning much as
they did prior to the war. The tempo
is faster, because all production
schedules have been stepped up. The
forgings and castings supplied by the
industry itself are rolling out in
numbers greater than any of the
final assembly chiefs expected to re-
Quire for many months.
This is particularly true in the
aluminium forging divisions OF sew
eral of the more thoroughly inte-
grated factories. In these divisions
the output is mainly for the aircraft
engine and airframe subassemblies
production of the former car in
dustry.
There is scarcely major factory
participating in the automotive in
dustry's war production effort that
Is not ahead Of its production sched-
ule. The exceptions are mainly in
factories that have just begun their
war weapon jobs.
All others, their directing execu-
tives says, are from weeks to many
months up on tank, airplane, air.
craft engine, guns, shells, military
vehicle and other implement sched-
ules.