Word: tools
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Last week the National Machine Tool Builders' Association gave out some good news: in September, it reported, tool deliveries rose 8%, to nearly double the figure for a year ago. But at present production rates, the tool builders said, it would take two years to fill the orders on their books-and the peak of defense orders is still to come...
Problems & Know-How. Why are machine-tool builders so far behind? One reason is that the machine-tool industry must literally lift itself by its bootstraps; it must make its own tools before it can start producing them for anyone else. Another is that at war's end the U.S. Government sold 300,000 surplus tools at 15?on the dollar, and swamped the market. For five years, machine-tool production slumped. Thus, when the Korean war broke, producers were deluged with orders for replacement tools as well as for the new types needed for the weapons of modern...
Every special-purpose tool is an industrial problem in itself. Last week Cincinnati Milling engineers were poring over a book just received from an aircraft company, describing a new kind of bomber landing gear. "These are not blueprints," said one engineer. "They just explain what [the company] wants and leave it up to us to figure out a machine that will make it. Nothing like it has ever been made before." In the same way, other complicated problems are dumped in Geier's lap. Samples: ¶ The Air Force wants a tool that...
...Pans. Such machines take months to design, months more to make. Because of their special uses, they cannot be mass-produced. Even such standard products as milling machines (see cut), which bore, grind and shave metal, are virtually handmade. Cincinnati Milling turns out only ten or twelve a week. Tool builders are beset by shortages of such components as bearings, valves and clutches. Said one New England toolman: "You hate to see a machine standing there, all completed except for a lousy little electric starter. You not only can't deliver it to the man who needs...
...What he found was startling. Schedules asked by the military were so far above the doable that aircraft plants and suppliers were fabricating more parts than could be used in completed planes for months to come. Thus, scarce materials were being needlessly tied up. When Boyer added up machine-tool requirements for the plane program, he found the schedules called for more tools in the next year than any machine-tool man thought the hamstrung industry could possibly produce...