The Merlin Engine

[engarde]

Lets all pause for a second, and consider the manufacturing reality of the time.

The Merlin engine..... it didnt just blink into existance.

No such thing as CnC machining.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzYxBbitP_s

So much hands on work.

So many experts, a long lost time.

Never to be repeated.

[Ze-Jamz]

Lets all pause for a second, and consider the manufacturing reality of the time.

The Merlin engine..... it didnt just blink into existance.

No such thing as CnC machining.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzYxBbitP_s

So much hands on work.

So many experts, a long lost time.

Never to be repeated.

Nice..

[Khamsin]

Great post and video.

[Anvilfolk]

Oh, god, all that polishing............

[Viper2000]

Brilliant!

However, IMO the most impressive part of the whole business was the fact that Royce and co were able to just draw the thing in the first place. Once you've got drawing to work from, building an engine is a process.

But the creative task of inventing and engine and then converting that idea into a set of drawings which men could build is almost magical. So I would argue that its the absence of CAD rather than the absence of CAM that really sets apart the engineering process of the past from that of the present.

In the case of the Merlin, it's all the more impressive when you consider that Royce was not in the best of health, and made most of his drawings whilst convalescing far from Derby.

[Trooper117]

Great stuff! Very informative..

[Koala63]

Just one modern Occupational Health and Safety audit in that factory would ensure the Merlin never got off the drawing board. Those were the days, when Personal Protective Equipment meant a brown dust jacket and a cloth cap.

[Viper2000]

Just one modern Occupational Health and Safety audit in that factory would ensure the Merlin never got off the drawing board. Those were the days, when Personal Protective Equipment meant a brown dust jacket and a cloth cap.

Not at all - the factory was clearly so dangerous that the inspectors obviously wouldn't make it out alive, and therefore could never make any reports. :-P

[pupo162]

just the work i got into for drawing a 1 piston engine, with CAD.... cant imagine actaully creating one of these....


dB605 is better tough :-P

[41Sqn_Stormcrow]

No, CAD is just another tool. The genious is not with tools but to find the sweet point between all the contradicting requirements that offers the best performance and a good dose of luck - says the engineer.

[Viper2000]

No, CAD is just another tool. The genious is not with tools but to find the sweet point between all the contradicting requirements that offers the best performance and a good dose of luck - says the engineer.

Bah. I do trade studies all the time. That's just maths. It's big and scary if you don't understand it, but if you do then it's just big maths, and tbh at PhD level you actually find is that 99% of what you do is actually computer-assisted* GCSE maths with scary references.

Drawing the blasted thing is a nightmare. I mean, it's a long time since I actually did design drawings by hand, but heck, even just drawing quite simple parts was massively time consuming. Engines have thousands of parts. They all have to fit together, both at the temperature that the beast is assembled at, and at the considerably higher temperature at which it is expected to run. They must not interfere, even under the worst-case combination of temperatures and accelerations.

And of course it has to actually be possible to build the thing. So there has to be a way of assembling it, and there must also be the necessary jigs and tools.

And without CAD, you've got to work all of this stuff out in your head before you even put pencil to paper.

I'm sorry, but Damn.

*Both in the sense that Wolfram Alpha does the mathematics for you, and also in the sense that you tend to use a huge amount of computing power to perform massive number of quite simple but tedious operations for you at high speed. And then, when you discover that you can get a computer to do a week's worth of maths in about a minute, you naturally write enough code to tie the blasted thing up for two weeks, and then swear at it incessantly when it inevitably crashes after 13 days.

[Nitrous]

I used to work in that exact same building as shown in the video about 3 1/2 years ago.
They have just completed the flattening of the whole of Rolls-Royce Main Works at Nightingale Road Derby, only leaving the Marble Hall, at the front as its listed.
In the new factory we still use the same old gear cutting machines as seen in the video, when manufacturing the engines that go on the Airbus aircraft that you all fly on holiday in.

Great Video.

All I can say is By By to the engineering manufacturing in this country thanks to Health & Safety and accident insurance claims.

[ElAurens]

Heads and cylinders cast in unit?

Kind of puts the engine DM of "blown cylinder head gasket" into question, doesn't it?

[617Squadron]

I used to work in that exact same building as shown in the video about 3 1/2 years ago.
They have just completed the flattening of the whole of Rolls-Royce Main Works at Nightingale Road Derby, only leaving the Marble Hall, at the front as its listed.
In the new factory we still use the same old gear cutting machines as seen in the video, when manufacturing the engines that go on the Airbus aircraft that you all fly on holiday in.

Great Video.

All I can say is By By to the engineering manufacturing in this country thanks to Health & Safety and accident insurance claims.

The gear cutting machines; were they Sunderlands or David Browns? I couldn't quite tell from the video, but my guess is that they were Sunderlands.

The David Brown site at Lockwood, Huddersfield still had some Sunderland gear cutters when I used to visit it once a week back in 2002. They probably still have them now! David Brown could still probably make parts for them, as they still had the drawings.

[maxwellbest]

Yep, no cad back in those days. Rooms full of people drawing to standards of the day. I agree with the statement that CAD is just a tool. (Disclaimer, I am an engineering draftsman). Re those videos, reminds so much of one of my metalwork teachers. Ex RAF, would wear a dustcoat, shirt, tie, vest on underneath. Looked exactly like those guys in the video...Great stuff.

[kimosabi]

Heads and cylinders cast in unit?

Kind of puts the engine DM of "blown cylinder head gasket" into question, doesn't it?

They are still two piece.

Very cool vid OP, just shows us that the methods are still used today, it's in the design department the real evolution has happened.

[Al Schlageter]

1/4 scale Merlin

http://dynamotive.netfirms.com/merlin/

Speaking of old machinery, the company I worked for back in the late '90s had a WW2 era lathe that was much used. Was used for drilling 3/4" dia holes in 6" dia aluminum round. Some of the holes went all the way through (up to 10" but the piece had to reversed) or tapping blind holes. No automatic reverse, so one had to be quick on the reverse lever. Can't remember it ever breaking down, though the newer lathe did.

[Kongo-Otto]

Just one modern Occupational Health and Safety audit in that factory would ensure the Merlin never got off the drawing board. Those were the days, when Personal Protective Equipment meant a brown dust jacket and a cloth cap.

Maybe the brown dust jacket and the cloth cap where enough, because the workers knew the risk of their Jobs.
And be shure that the average UK Worker from this time had an higher educational standard than many people today.

[kimosabi]

I have a Czech lathe in my workshop, big ass chunk from the 50's, using it on everything from small bolts to 3.5m/2"+ propshafts and it's always smooth sailing. Old as heck but as I've been told, it has never never broke down in the 30+ years they've had it.

[choctaw111]

That really a really great video. Thanks for posting.