Longbridge Tour
An account of a visit to the Longbridge Works in the
1920s
The Longbridge works of the Austin Motor
Company is situated seven miles south of Birmingham on the main
road that runs from the city centre to Worcester. It original
occupied 2.5 acres in 1905 when it was out in the country, but now
it has grown to 220 acres. and can best described as now semi
rural
Physically the works are made up of three sections. One of these,
that is now called West Works was built in the war and was devoted
then to the production of munitions, turning out 8,000,000 shells,
various sizes up to 9.2in along with many 4.5in howitzers. Enormous
quantities of night tracers, percussion tubes, burster cases, and
shrapnel heads, and thousands of aeroplane engines, electric
generating sets, and Lewis-carts.
The other two sections, on the other side of the road, are known as
the North and South Works, the later is flanked on the South by a
large test track and sports ground, includes the little nucleus
from which the great factory has grown. The Halesowen Railway,
which gives communication with the great Western system, separates
these two sections, and they are bounded on the East by the main
Derby-to-Bristol line of the London Midland and Scottish Railway,
just where it emerged from the Cofton Tunnel, which has recently
been demolished and converted into an open
cutting.
Railway
Facilities
The railway
facilities are thus excellent, and they are turned to good
advantage by means of connecting sidings with an aggregate length
of seven miles, which enabled trucks to reach and be dispatched
from every part of the works. every year these sidings receive over
120,000 tons of material, and 45,000 tons of coal, coke, and oil
fuel are brought in, the works requiring the services of eight
goods trains a day. the corresponding output is, in round numbers,
200 cars a day, most of which go away by road, but, some by rail,
securely packed complete in special wooden boxes, and some in the
form of chassis parts for reassembly at their
destination.
View from the Railway Bridge
How great are the advances that have been
made in methods of production is indicated by the fact that in 1906
the manufacture of 120 cars required 270 workers, whereas to-day
over 60,0000 a year are turned out by rather more than 12,000
employees. The dispersal of this crowd of men and women, when work
stops at half past five in the afternoon, is a remarkable sight.
They travel by special trains, with the works have their own
private passenger station or halt – tramcars, motor- omnibuses,
bicycles and various nondescript vehicles, and in 20 minutes or so
they have disappeared, leaving behind them only a few men in the
foundry, where operations cannot be entirely discontinued, and a
night costing staff which gets out the cost of manufacture from day
to day.
Looking up the Lickey
Road
At presents the Longbridge works are
producing five models – Twenty and a Light Sixteen with six
cylinders, and a Twenty and a Light Sixteen with cylinders, and a
Twenty, a Twelve, and the famous Seven with four. These are the
Treasury or RAC ratings, but in fact all the models when their
engines are running at 2,000 RPM, develop at least twice their
nominal power on the brake, except the Seven, which at 2,400 RPM
gives 10.5 break horse power. Incidentally it may be mentioned that
this little car is an old love of the Austin Company; they first
introduced it in 1910, and though, with its single-cylinder engine,
it was very different from what it is now, it even then had three
forward speeds and reverse, as it has today.
Manufacturing
Methods
While these five models offer a range that
meets all ordinary requirements they permit the realization of the
economy that arises from continuous production on a large scale,
and avoid the expense which has sometimes proved the downfall of
makers essayed the undue multiplication of patterns. It must also
be emphasized that these cars, chassis and bodies alike are really
and truly manufactured at Longbridge. The Austin Company are not
mere assemblers of purchased parts, and though some components,
such as tyres, have, of course, to be bought in, all the processes
required to convert the raw material into finished cars are,
generally speaking, carried out within their own
works.
Pressing Body Panels
Some of the initial stages of this
conversion are carried out with cold metal, but most with hot. Cold
working is to be seen in the light and heavy press shops, situated
in the South Works alongside the LMS railway, which contains
presses of all sizes and capacities up to the huge 500 ton Bliss
double-action toggle press, which was the first tool of its kind to
be used in this country. By passage through these machines sheets
of metal are formed into a great variety of parts, such as
mudwings, shields, scuttles, tanks, panels both with and without
window spaces, and many other smaller objects. For some articles
two or three operations are required, but in any case a few seconds
suffice for work which took several workers, when formerly it was
done by hand. More than that, the margin of error of the machine is
very small, and in respect of accuracy the product is much
superior.
Metal
Work
Drop - Forging
In the stamping shop work is done with
white hot metal. This shop is also in the South Works, and adjacent
to it is the steel stores, containing stocks of many kinds of
steel, each having its own distinguishing mark and colour painted
upon it. Alongside there is a shop in which the rough steel is cut
into suitable sizes and lengths. The stamping process is applied to
the production of many diverse objects, ranging from an autovac
strap end weighing half an ounce to a flywheel having a weight of
1.5 cwt. Like cold pressing, hot stamping involves the use of
intricate and costly dies which have to be fashioned with the
greatest accuracy, these are all made in a special department known
as the tool room. This is in fact a works inside a works, and in
view of its vital importance it may fairly be called the heart of
the whole establishment. The manufacture of dies is only a part of
its duties, and in addition it is responsible for designing and
making tools that are needed to meet the special requirements of
the company in the machine shops, as well as for making and keeping
in order the jigs and fixtures which ensure rapidity and accuracy
of workmanship.
Of two other departments which lie close to the stamping shop, one
is the pickling shop, where the stampings are immersed in chemical
baths to clear and free them from scale; and the other is the heat
treatment and hardening shop. The surfaces of gears and similar
parts have to be hardened in order to enable them to resist wear,
the operation being conducted in furnaces heated by means of
vaporized oil or of town gas supplied by the Birmingham
Corporation. The purpose of heat treatment, for which producer gas
is employed, is to coax the steel, by submitting it to appropriate
temperatures, into the condition in which it is best able to bear
the stresses put upon it during use.
Foundry
It is necessary to cross over into the
North Works to reach the foundry, which is concerned entire with
molten metal, here steel, cast iron, and
aluminium are worked. Each week around 35,000 castings which
representing a weight of 100 tons are produced by oil-fired Stocks
converters. The casting
produced include the largest parts of the engine, such as the
cylinder, which whether four or six in number, consist of a single
monobloc casting and the aluminium crankcase. The equipment
includes modern hydraulic moulding machines, and the sand-mixing
and conveying machinery is the best that money can buy. Sand has to
be of special quality so as to produce castings up to the standard
insisted upon by the Austin Company. Adjacent to the foundry is a
well equipped pattern shop, where both wooded and metal patterns
are constructed. To the east of it stands the main power house,
which produces 4,500kw of power from three turbo-generators,
sometimes this is supplemented from the mains when
needed.
The
Machine Shops
The foundry
completes the list of departments in which the use of heat is the
dominant factor, and in the various machine shops to which the
rough shapes that have been produced from raw metal are next taken,
where the operations are performed cold. Such heat as there is
generated by the action of the machines themselves and is a
nuisance rather than a help, and in most cases special measures
have to be taken to remove the swarf. To prevent the item been
machined from getting too hot, which could effect its accuracy, the
cutting edges of the tools are flooded with a liquid coolant. The
operations are of the most diverse character and are performed on
hundreds of machines, but they all resolve themselves into the
removal of metal, by cutting, milling, drilling, boring, grinding
or allied processes.
___
Crankshafts
Machining
The machining of the different parts is
concentrated in different shops or portions of shops. No 1 machine
shop, for example is devoted to the production of front and rear
axles, and here the various details are machined and put together
as they move forward step by step, until at the end of the line
they emerge as finished units, ready to be incorporated in the
chassis after passing the standard test . In a still larger shop
allocated to engines and gearboxes the same system is followed. The
engine castings have boxes made truly round and smooth, their heads
receive the attentions of multiple drill, which piece them with
holes by the dozen simultaneously, and the two put together are
subject to hydraulic pressure to prove their soundness.
Multi-Spindle Drilling
Machine
Elsewhere a line of crankshafts may be
seen in different stages of finish, but all moving towards a
machine where the trueness of their balance is ascertained. here
the operator is able to ascertain whether a slight excess of metal,
which would be detrimental to the smooth running of the engine, has
been left on any of the throws; if a defect of this kind is
discovered it is rectified before the shaft is passed for service.
Meanwhile other engine components are being made in other parts of
the shop, and finally they are brought together and fitted in place
one by one as the engine moves along the assembly line, until at
the end it is a finished unit ready for its bench test.
Crankshaft Balancing
Chassis
Assembly
In assembling the
chassis the same principle is followed. By mechanical conveyors of
various kinds with some underground, overhead, or at ground level.
The different component units are brought to the points of assembly
ready to the hand of the erector. Starting life at one end of an
assembly line as a steel frame, the infant chassis is moved on step
by step by the mechanically driven track on which it is mounted,
and at each step the parts axles, wheels (with their tyres already
fitted), transmission, gear-box, engine, dashboard, and all the
rest of them – come successively into place and mechanics perform
the operations necessary to fix them. By the time the chassis
reaches the other end of the line it is fully grown up, and is
driven off under its own power for a running test before being
taken to receive its body.
Chassis Assembly Line
The bodies of the Sevens are made in a
shop close to that in which the chassis are assembled, and are also
mounded there. The larger cars are finished in a huge new shop,
nearly a quarter of a mile long, which stands to the south of South
Works, but bodies are made in west Works. Here an astonishing
number of trades are represented. There are large stocks of skins
of various colours, which have to be cut up to the best advantage
to form the leather coverings of cushions. The preparations of the
upholstery and the trimmings gives occupation to a small army of
workers, many of them women; cutting machines deal with thousands
of yards of carpet and other materials daily; and ingenious
sewing-machines stitch bands on the fabrics used to line the roofs
in such away that no seam is visible when the material is attached
in position.
Body
Building
Though wood is
used to a smaller extent than formerly in the construction of
bodies, there is a large sawmill and workshop, the atmosphere of
which is kept free from dust with remarkable success. The
foundation of a body now consists of a steel framework, the members
of which, are each designed to give the necessary strength where it
is required and specially stiffened at the points where the
severest stresses are imposed, are firmly riveted or welded
together, and the rigidity and resistance to distortion of the
structure are enhanced by aluminium sheets or panels fastened upon
it. These metal panels lend themselves well to the application of
the new cellulose lacquers, and the end result of the combination
is regarded as a definite advance upon wood construction with paint
and varnish finish. In completing the bodies the same progressive
principle is adopted as in assembling the chassis, some operation
being performed or some part added at each point as the move along
a trackway.
Wings Been Enamelled
So far as production methods are concerned
the motto of the Austin works might well be “Make and Use” In
general, components and parts are not made for store, but are used
as quickly as they are made. Output in the foundry, machine shops,
and other department is balanced to keep even pace with consumption
in the assembly bays; and while there is no delay owing to lack of
necessary constituents, there is no accumulation of manufactured
material lying unused and representing idle capital.