The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 13, Issue 12 (March 1, 1939.)
Buy New Zealand Goods — … and Build New Zealand — New Zealand Industries Series — No. 1— General Engineering
Buy New Zealand Goods
… and Build New Zealand
New Zealand Industries Series
No. 1— General Engineering.
(Rly. Publicity photos.)
It is intended that this series of articles should give some idea of New Zealand's advance in industrial progress.
To find a starting point was difficult, for there was such an modern factory production is the machine.
I soon found that we have in New Zealand, not only huge plants turning out a wide variety of articles, but that the very tools and machines which ensure the production are themselves designed and fabricated in New Zealand.
It is impossible in the compass of this article to cover the whole field, so that I had to make a selection. I have taken as typical examples four engineering units; a great foundry and structural steel plant; a modern scientific precision engineering company; a highly specialised factory competing efficiently with overseas makers; and, lastly, a small but well-equipped workshop where the engineering art reaches its highest expression—tool-making.
I have had fascinating days and shocks of almost electric intensity to find the pitch to which our engineering industry has attained. “New Zealand is marching on.”
Engineering for the purpose of this story does not include motor works and their ramifications, nor the business of electrical supplies, or a dozen and one branches of activity which involve the use of machinery. “General Engineering,” as a term, is confined to the concerns which make the machines, or the structural steel skeletons for great buildings, and the like.
At the beginning of this century, there were thirty-seven establishments of this kind whose efforts added 176,000 to the wealth of the community. To-day there are no less than 206 separate organisations who bring over a million and a quarter into the community chest, and keep 3,727 New Zealanders in work. Some firms are nation-wide, one of them, for instance, having fourteen branches. The growth of this particular industry only goes to prove once more how essentially British we are. That delightful everyday philosopher, Wyndham Lewis, explains in his last book about John Bull, the reasons that made the British the first portion of the human race to be clean shaven.
General Engineering in New Zealand
(1) A corner of Cable's construction steel shop. (2) Cable's steel store, served by railway siding. Overhead designed and made by Cable's. (3) Standard Engineering Company's big die-press. (4) Last-word in modern die-making plant at Pallo's. (5) Examples of dies for producing spoons made by machine at Pallo's. (6) Press at Neeco which cuts and shapes parts of electric range. (7) Moulding-shop at Cable's. (8) “In all degrees.” Petrol-pumps made at Pallo's.
The surveys that follow show this principle at work in its highest form. I would have loved to have covered this subject by describing in detail the splendour, modernity, and comprehensive efficiency of our own Railway Workshops of which one distinguished visitor said: “There are larger plants in the world, but none better.”
However, this article will be confined to the achievement of our own pioneer citizens. Our first visit was paid to the works of William Cable and Co., Ltd., on the noble Hutt highway. There is something about “Cables” which is distinctive. This old, purely New Zealand concern was founded by E. W. Mills and the late Mr. William Cable who joined as engineering foreman, and subsequeutly became a partner. As the foundation date was 1854, its own centennial celebrations are approaching. There are many men on the staff with forty or more years of service.
A factor that applies to all engineering shops is one of outstanding community value. The great bulk of employees in this branch of industry are not only males, but are adult heads of families. At Cables, in particular, there is an atmosphere which for want of a better term I shall call “He-man.” The mighty mechanisms call for strong muscles, good nerves, and physical deftness. I looked at one enormous cutting wheel sheering through a steel ingot. There was no heat, no sparks flew, and the large steel mass was cut through in 1 3/4 minutes. The expert in charge had all the proud ways of a stud groom showing off his best horse.
The first process in steel constructional work is the preparation of the pattern or “template.” This is a wooden replica of the work to be done, not a miniature, but the exact size. At Cables, therefore, one great well-lighted upstairs, floor is used for the laying-out of templates. Our picture shows the lay-out for the new radio towers on Tinakori Hill, in 40 feet sections, and on the side were the big wooden patterns for Harbour Board trusses.
In November of last year, Cables put out 486 tons of fabricated steel. The “Shortland Street job” took 850 tons.
Steel is dealt with here as if it were soap or cheese.
One interesting place is the service store where tools are issued on a neat system. We show also the steel store, where streams of railway trucks load and unload masses of steel bars, trusses, plates of all conceivable lengths, sizes, angles, and thickness.
I was seeking in my mind for what was missing in my recollections of foundries before, and it proved to be “steam.” No smoke anywhere prompted my question and I found that the 2,000 h.p. on tap here all day, was electrically produced.
By way of contrast, we spent a fascinating afternoon at the Pallo Engineering Works. This is the antithesis of the great Cable plant. Here the machines are relatively small, of incredible symmetry and speed of action, and of an intricacy and ingenuity that defy translation into words. Here, however, are the principles which also apply to the big works. The staff are all men, adults with the exception of the apprentices. Craftsmanship is a serious thing at Pallos, and here, perhaps, the lesson of this area of human activity gets deeper signficance.
Precision engineering is a business of ideals mixed with mathematics—of exact calculations, and chemical and mechanical research carried out in an atmosphere of working fellowship. The difference between the artificer, the workman, and the directing expert must be one of degree, not of kind.
Here we are close to the heart of the problem of production of the mechanical helps to our present day scheme of living. The glib solution usually quoted is “Mass Production,” a vague idea in our minds of a huge mass of machines turning out a vast number of things per hour. I have always suspected that there was something wrong with the logic that argued that mere numbers brought about efficiency and therefore cheapness. My own experience was that size in an organisation often militated against, and not for, efficiency. There is a tendency for the figures to take charge; there is growth towards impersonal control; and the most well meant humanism is hopeless where there are masses of industrial troops whose individuality is obliterated.
The technical magazine library was impressive and we took a picture of it. Mr. Pallo has the plain doctrine that the final objective of his organisation is simply, knowledge. The gospel text of the precision branch of engineering is the word “Tolerances.” To my surprise I found that there is no such thing as an exact fit and that there are thousands of text books, volumes of diagrams and veritable arsenals of instruments to deal with this problem of “tolerances.” The tolerance is the measure of the maximum variation that can be allowed if mechanical parts are to be interchangeable. Instruments that measure and check to the one thousandth part of an inch are necessities at Pallo's. Many great firms in the world do nothing but make these precision instruments. Micrometers, limit gauges, calliper gauges, powerful magnifying glasses are all in evidence. A neat small box will contain hundreds of pounds worth of them. Working to the limits of exactness prescribed by these metal warders is the life and death necessity of this type of work, and the “Stop and Go” gauge is the final arbiter.
I saw here a gear hobbing machine which cuts gears from a solid wheel in an unbelievable sideways fashion.
Mr. Pallo has taken out himself no less than twenty-three different patents, and the whole place has an air of study and initiative. Noise is not very noticeable, and the whole ninety of the staff can hear the radio which runs the whole time.
Pallo's is worth a visit, as an example of a kind of competence that is usually associated with the older scientific and technological organisations of Europe. There is an air of learning and idealism, and the staff, on my visit, were concentrating hard on the entries for the sports events at the annual picnic.
Next we paid a call on the Neeco factory and received a series of shocks. This is a specialist factory making an excellent electric range, but it is an example of entire self-contained working. The sheet iron plates arrive at the door and the rest is done, inside, with New Zealand hands, brains and materials. The sheets are of standard size, and pass through a series of presses, transforming them steadily into the exact shapes, sizes, and designs that finally assemble into the square, neat, handsome Neeco electric cooking stove. Our picture shows them arranged in dozens for despatch all over New Zealand. Guillotines cut the sheets, and they are shaped by dies, which have been made in the factory. Speaking of “tolerances,” the maximum allowed at Neeco is 1/64th of an inch. The large press shown in our picture is a marvel of efficiency, handling the backs, sides, and tops, bending, cutting, punching holes and so on with almost magical precision.
Iron expands when heated and the expansion ratio of the enamel content and the iron has to be matched exactly. The spray gun expert has to be an artist. There must not be the tiniest trace of a finger mark on the plate, hence the “pickling” room. A ground coat is applied first, and then the colours, fawn, blue, green, white or black are applied. A fascinating variation to watch is the mottle, or marbling.
No fingers ever touch the plates; they are held by hooks and are slid into the glowing furnace on racks, to be fused in a matter of minutes.
The assembly rooms are interesting. Exactness is the watchword, and the sturdiness of the Neeco range had just come in for a surprise testimonial a day or two before my visit. A range, unboxed, had dropped on its edge by accident from the top of a well-laden lorry, and all that was done by way of damage was a trifling dent in one corner. Everyone in the place seemed as pleased as if a sweep ticket had proved a winner.
The Neeco factory is a worthwhile New Zealand possession. It is a self-contained production unit, translating precision engineering into utility practice, and once more illustrating the maxim that “engineering exists to do away with human drudgery.”
Our tour concluded with a survey of a fine example of that highest manifestation of the engineer's art, the tool-making workshop. The Standard Engineering Company has a select companionship of both craftsmen and machines. The latter have been chosen from many different countries.
Here is an eclectic plant in the real sense. For the everyday layman, the most exciting sight here is the set of working tools which make the tobacco tin. Once more we meet the problem of “tolerances”; drawing and designs have to be of infinite accuracy and gauges which check infinitesimal measurements are in constant use. But here comes in “that little bit extra” of the song.
A tool can be fashioned with every appearance of perfect precision, and responding to every test. Yet when it comes to dealing with such a problem as making “flowing” tin behave, a something more is needed, and the personal skill of the craftsman enters the picture. Test after test on the actual tin is made; changes that are almost imperceptible are wrought, and finally, and triumphantly, “it works! Eureka!”
So in this compact, unpretentious, and competent establishment, we take leave of New Zealand's engineering industry.
It has been a heart warming week of experience for me, and we can safely join in the belief that in industry it is true that “New Zealand Marches On.”