The World Turns

A detailed account of manufacturing processes in the early 1960s.

An introductory section shows the various parts of the lathe and emphasises the need for precision in the manufacture. The film then shows casting and grinding of the beds, and stresses that the moulds are made from aluminium patterns and faced with graphite. We see the cores being made and hardened with CO2, then inserted in the mould. The foundry work is shown in detail, from the filling of the cupola from the furnace to the fettling of the finished castings. The beds are finished in one pass by tungsten carbide cutters, hardened by induction heating and finally ground three at a time.The film goes on to deal with the building up of the headstock. Seasoned castings are shot, blasted and painted, then milled automatically. The bearing holes are drilled in one pass in a multi spindle machine. Next we see the manufacture of headstock gears; the successive stages of machining, followed by hardening by induction heating under water and final honing. A spot check in the standards room involves drawing out the profiles of gear teeth on a chart recorder. The next section concerns the turning of the lathe spindle. The bearing seatings are ground 1/10 thou (one ten thousandth of an inch) tolerance, and the spindle is checked for size, concentricity and ovality.The final part of the manufacturing process is the assembly of the spindle of the high precision taper roller bearings. Women check the rollers visually and use gauges to group them by size; matched sets of rollers are assembled into the bearing cage. The finished lathes are tested; the test piece is required to be round to better that 1/10 thou.The film concludes with various selling points of Colchester Lathes. Their versatility is brought out by showing the range of attachments available. The high standards of the after sales, the spare parts service are underlined with shots of the firms fleet of vans, the stores and the dispatch section. Finally, the range of lathes manufactured is reviewed.

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The Colchester Lathe Company Factory

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The world turns on Colchester Lathes.

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Colchester