THOMAS PERRY AND SON LTD

7.  The Production Process part 2

by Michael Mooney

25.  Final finishing on a plate or strip mill roll. The working surface of the roll barrel is being ground.

26.  Shows one of the metallurgists, Barry Davis (or Davies) checking the hardness of a finished roll in the machine shop. The roll is almost certainly for a strip mill.

The instrument being used is a Vickers Pyramid machine. The principle was that a tiny pyramid shaped diamond was forced into the roll surface under pressure. The softer the roll the larger the impression made in the metal. The size of the impression was measured using a microscope built into the instrument and this size gave a measure of the metal hardness, reported as a VPN [Vickers Pyramid number].

27.  Again Barry Davis (or Davies) using the Vickers instrument to measure roll hardness.
28.  Shows a worker in the machine shop (Norman Wright, I think) checking the profile of a finished (or nearly finished) small roll.

29.  Again shows Norman Wright  (?) checking the dimensions of a pair of rolls.

Rolls worked in pairs (or multiples) when installed in the mills so it was necessary to check the pair to ensure that the correct profile would be produced on the steel being rolled by the customer.
30.  Incising the identification marks into spade ends. These rolls would have been strip mill rolls.

31.  Conducting chemical analysis of metals in the works laboratory.

The person shown is me, Michael Mooney.

I would like to thank Michael Mooney and all the other contributors to these pages for their invaluable help.

 
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