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Vincent Factory Photos

D

Diogenes

Well Known and Active Forum Website User
Non-VOC Member
Some time ago the VOC web site included about a dozen or so Vincent Factory Photos.
These included rows of components lined up on benches as if for a military inspection.
I suspect that this display was to impress some visiting bigwigs such as potential investors, but that is just a guess.
Has anyone found out for real what that display was all about?
When was it and why?
 
C

clevtrev

Well Known and Active Forum Website User
VOC Member
Diogenes said:
Some time ago the VOC web site included about a dozen or so Vincent Factory Photos.
These included rows of components lined up on benches as if for a military inspection.
I suspect that this display was to impress some visiting bigwigs such as potential investors, but that is just a guess.
Has anyone found out for real what that display was all about?
When was it and why?
Click to expand...

They were doing their ISO 9001.
 
T

Tom Gaynor

Well Known and Active Forum Website User
VOC Member
When I worked in the aerospace industry in Saff London, almost every company had display cases of jewelry in the foyer. These would be composed of immensely complicated components in titanium and ally alloy and stainless steel. (The company I worked for took a 1500 lb slab of aluminium in, and sent it out as a 35 lb cockpit frame for TSR2.) The cognoscenti knew that all the components on display were scrap. If they had been good 'uns, they'd have been sold. The bigger the display...
There is one Vincent factory picture which shows three engine builders, each behind his bench with a motor "in progress". Running the length of the three benches is a long table with barrels, crankcases and so on laid out on it. A former works employee, asked to interpret (not by me), explained that the bits on the bench were those that resisted attempts at selective assembly. They would go back to the shop for rework. Right now, they were scrap. (In the Rudge factory they would have been booked in as "spares"...)
At one time Harley Davidson engine builders drew all the parts needed for a week's engine building on Monday morning. Blessed was he whose engine was build on Monday. And cursed he whose engine was built on Friday from the detritus... Don't crow too soon: Black Shadows resulted from assembling together Rapide parts that were close to design dimension. What happened to the parts rejected for Shadows?
What has happened in the last 60 years is that factories no longer run machine tools clapped out by running 24/7 from 1939 to 1945, and that CNC machine tools can compensate for tool wear as they go along. But so long as you know that wearing components may be best replaced in pairs, because they were built in pairs, an undersize piston with an undersize liner, there's no problem.
 
D

david bowen

Well Known and Active Forum Website User
Non-VOC Member
Tom I was the guy that told the story and it was correct the term used at the factory was parts with a clash of tolerances i was 15 at that time (you could not be an apprentice until the age of 16)
 
B

BigEd

Well Known and Active Forum Website User
VOC Member
VOC Forum Website Moderator
Ah, mention of the TSR2. A fantastic innovative aircraft designed in the 1960's time and scrapped by the government in 1965. There are two remaining examples in "display cases", one at Duxford and the other at Cosford.

Tom Gaynor said:
When I worked in the aerospace industry in Saff London, almost every company had display cases of jewelry in the foyer. These would be composed of immensely complicated components in titanium and ally alloy and stainless steel. (The company I worked for took a 1500 lb slab of aluminium in, and sent it out as a 35 lb cockpit frame for TSR2.) The cognoscenti knew that all the components on display were scrap. ...............
Click to expand...
 
D

Diogenes

Well Known and Active Forum Website User
Non-VOC Member
I assume from the replies so far, ranging from facetious to irrelevant, that there has been a lack of understanding of the query.

Perhaps the person who first obtained the photos for the VOC web site could tell us the source of those photos and maybe a bit of background info?
 
C

clevtrev

Well Known and Active Forum Website User
VOC Member
BigEd said:
Ah, mention of the TSR2. A fantastic innovative aircraft designed in the 1960's time and scrapped by the government in 1965. There are two remaining examples in "display cases", one at Duxford and the other at Cosford.
Click to expand...

You`ll have a bit of me there. I was involved in machining the pintle longerons. You might have to google that.
 
vibrac

vibrac

Well Known and Active Forum Website User
VOC Member
The club has an achivist he has the photos, if you are a member: enjoy
 
Albervin

Albervin

Well Known and Active Forum Website User
VOC Member
vibrac said:
The club has an achivist he has the photos, if you are a member: enjoy
Click to expand...
Sort of a "need to know" basis, eh. You pays your money etc. I think that after 4 years Diogenes is not going to join us. By the way is that Diogenes the cynic or Diogenes the stoic? :)
 
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