Droop & Rein Information ?

Hey Guys, Just saw a post about wonderfull machinery made back then and it got me thinking. As a young man when i first started out as a machinist before the selfie culture and the SJW nonsense and diversity etc etc The men in the workshop would never have even considered to take a photo of the machine they worked on. Indeed if you did your fellow work collegues would have ripped you a new one and made jokes at your expense. However that would not have prevented me from taking photos if i had had a camera. More that taking a photo of a machine may have been akin to being a little pridefull a little boastful and a little distastefull. The possabilty of being seen as such bothered me so i did not keep a full record of every machine i worked but as the 90's turned into the 2000's and culture seemed to shift to toward the boastful and the braggarts it became necessary to edit one's CV to detail all the wonderful things you could do and how brilliant a mind you were just to even be considered for a job. Simply putting down that you were a Fitter Turner was no longer enough to get past the HR Team in an office somewhere. So now i regret not taking those photos, not recording the machines i worked and not taking photos of the work I produced. Also i am now of the mind that they interesting and nice to look at. Much like a bikini model Lets call it Cast Iron Porn

SO one of the machines I was most proud to have operated, one that, if had a photo i could point to and say look at this. I used to operate this ! Well that machine is a Droop & Rein Gantry Mill. She was an old girl and a bit of a beast. It was in a factory owned and run by Stork Folker in Schipol and before they demolished the factory they sold her to an eastern block country I believe. So she is long gone now. To where i will never know, much like an ex girlfriend Anyway she had 3 spindles and two large beds although I believe that they were maybe added later. They were hydraulicly operated with pneumatically operated vacume for the tables. The mill herself was old school with curved castings but had been retro fitted with CNC controls at some point. There was a spiral staircase to one side going up to a walkway that lead over the top of the machine to allow access to the spindle motors for the purposes of refilling the spindles with oil. She liked her oil i rememeber as she was past her best in some regards. Anyway Ive searched in the past, Ive tryed contacting D & R in germany and trawled the interwebs but to no avail. Id even search the Yellow Pages like J.R.R. Hartley if i thought it would do any good. I doubt i would have his luck though. So for no other reason than I would like to set eyes on her again if anyone has info on large D&R Gantry Mills then give me a shout. Before you say it Ive already looked at lathes.co.uk and shes not on tonys hall of fame.

I operated a smaller version of the Droop at one place I worked at lovely machine that would really shift metal. At the same place I operated a "Keller" copy mill along with a host of good old but high end well equipped machines. Alas like Paul no photos, just memories.

If my memory is working correctly. British Aerospace, Weybridge had a D&R copy mill. Its most "famous" task was milling the curved track for the nose drooping mechanism on Concorde. That said it was on its last legs then the operatros said it needed continual maintenance to keep it going

This a photo of the Droop and Rein copy mill at BAC Weybridge 1964 milling a nimonic steel forging for VC10 engine beams. The machine head was linked to a copy probe which followed a metal pattern which would have been hand 'lofted' in the mold loft. The milling cutters were HSS which had been nitrided to give an extra hardened skin. There were no CNC machines at Weybridge at the time, the nearest thing to that was a Cincinnati plano mill with a pneumatic read head reading x,y co-ordinates with no interpolation between points. Top of the picture were my wages for a week. Good old days !!

I can’t help with any pictures but we had a couple of Droops with Cincinatti Acramatic 4 NC control fitted. I remember on the last shift before Christmas I had to fit new brushes on the Ward Leonard generators for the axis drives and it was getting very late when I ran it up to check all was ok. In those days everyone was consuming their winnings from the biggest bottle draw you have ever seen as after lunch a blind eye was turned on night shift so plenty of good natured shouts to keep the noise down, we had to get it sorted as the dayshift still had a shift to work.

Mike

If you search on aviationancestry.co.uk and enter Elgar in the search box it will show a Flight advert from 1961 which features the Droop and Rein copy mill at Weybridge. If you click the request for full size advert it will arrive by email.

One of my sons asked me to tell him about what I did at work. Another son said not much when he called in to see me there was just a drawing spread over the desk.

I have some photographs taken in various jobs and wanted to plug some gaps using downloaded images. From 1975 to 1995 I claim to have worked at BAC/ BAe Filton starting as a skilled miller and ended as production engineer.

Regarding the Droop and Rein there were two machines in S03 machine shop. I was told that before my time they were used for landing gear parts and there were stillages of ripper cutters and other cutters on from memory were on 60 International tapers. In my time they had adaptors to use stores issue 50 International back ends.

Jobs included parts for RR RB211 pylons on Boeing 747. These were 2mm thick titanium sheets in packs of ten. There was also an engine hanger beam made of steel for the same aircraft. Also a titanium forging for Concorde centre walls. Thae firewall between each pair of Olympus engines. The machines were heavy on maintenance. I went into Production Engineering in 1977 or 78.

On one job we had a problem getting the templates lined up. As I used to work on the Droops I was asked to take a look. A National Express coach picked up from Filton House about 7AM so I took it on myself to hitch a ride to Weybridge to see how they did it. An easy fix but the coach did not leave Weybridge site until about 4PM so a lot of time to kill. Production Engineering kept me fed and watered and I found time to walk on the banked track at Brooklands.

one thing that puzzles me is how many Droops altogether. Another post says that Weybridge had four. I am not sure how many were there at Weybridge when I visited. Some history to go back to 1964. The Government of the day insisted that companies merged to create fewer, stronger, companies. Out of this came British Aircraft Corporation which included Weybridge and Filton sites. With the ending of Britannia work Filton did not have much work. Concorde was at that stage a development project. Sir George Edwards decreed that some Weybridge work be transferred to Filton. This I assume was the landing gear work on the two Droops at Filton. A question, were the two machines at Filton transferred from Weybridge so two machines on each site, or did Weybridge keep its four and Filton got two new machines.

Hi Geoff, I only remember 2 D&R copy mills in the machine shop, side by side in 1964. They were chewing out the engine beams in a Nimonic alloy forging ?? for the VC10s at the time. - but I could be mistaken. I spent 6 weeks sitting on the pylon listening to the noise the cutter made. If the pitch changed, I had to hit the stop button PDQ and get the tool setter to put a new cutter in.

Can't help with the Droop info but looking at your first pay slip brought back memories of mine; yours looks to be dated 13/9/63 .. Sept 63 ? that's when I first started work after leaving school, Sept '63, my first pay was £3 10s 6d... ( £3- 52-1/2p..todays conversion ), mill office boy & 1st year apprentice wages.. ah, my apprentice days !.. . One thing those days taught me, apart from my trade,.. Respect... don't see much of that these days..

George.

Crikey mechman, you where well paid. I started work in August 1963 as a toolmaker apprentice on the sum of £2-9s-11d. I remember a ten bob rise after 6 months then a pound or two a year until my time was finished at 21 years old.

40 years ago, this September I started at the Apprentice Training School at BAe Weybridge. £30 a week.