It is amazing to think about all the groundbreaking devices that were invented in this area over the years. Starting with Robbins and Lawrence in Windsor, in the mid 1800’s, with what came to be known as the “American System”. Looking at it now, it was quite a simple idea: make each part of a machine interchangeable, so that assembly of that machine could be quick and economical. But in the beginning the basic problem was to be able to make parts to close tolerances. The early machining processes did not lend themselves well to this, as the machinery was quite crude. With the building of better, more accurate, machinery, the idea became fact. It started in Windsor, with the manufacture of rifles for the Civil War. When I talk here of “machines”, I mean anything from guns to lathes to automobiles. Once the parts were made “identical”, mass production could be achieved. Much quicker and cheaper, than hand building each gun, lathe, or whatever.

James Hartness had developed a line of threading dies in the early 1900’s, but recognized that the inspection procedures of the time were crude and time consuming. At the time he was the chairman of the National Screw Thread Committee, and his interest in optics (he was an amateur astronomer), gave him an idea. With the help of Russell Porter, a Springfield native who was also familiar with astronomy, they developed the optical comparator around 1920. Using a set of magnifying lenses, and projecting a high powered light beam over the threads, and matching the profile onto a drawn chart, it was possible to measure, within very close tolerances, any feature of the thread, pitch, lead, root radius, etc. The lenses themselves were magnifying type, I.E. they magnified the profile so it was easier to measure on the charts. The optical comparator became a good fit with the other machinery that J&L sold.

The heart of the comparator is the lens system. There were no commercially available lenses that could be bought at the time, so J&L set about to make their own. They set up a lens grinding room and proceeded to grind their own lenses and mirrors to very precise and polished tolerances. The company offered lenses in several magnifications, depending on the job at hand. The basic comparator had a 14″ diameter screen, but sizes up to 30″ were available for larger workpiece inspection.

Because of the success of the TNC lathe product line, and the expected expansion of models, J&L had a serious lack-of-room situation. So a management decision was made to move the comparator product line out of Springfield. Textron had an empty factory building in South Carolina that had been used by Talon Zipper. This happened around 1980 or so. Anyone who was a part of the product line, engineering, sales or assembly, was offered a job in the new facility. Some decided to stay in Springfield, and some in Plant #1 wanted to move south. So there was some “swapping around” to accommodate these people.

The engineering office was really just one big room, well lit from the sawtooth roof design. There were large reciprocating fans mounted high on the vertical I-beams, which kept the air moving during the summer months. But there was no air conditioning. One of the engineers had been recording summer temperatures using a pencil, on one of the I-beams. I remember that it was common to see those numbers in the high 90’s, and even a few into the 100’s (I bet those numbers are still there, if you knew where to look). Quite oppressive to those of us wearing dress shirts and ties.

Our furniture consisted of old oak office drafting tables and a variety of drafting machines. Most of those were the older type with weighted arms which swung out over the tops of the drafting boards. The angular drafting surface itself could be adjusted manually, with a rod and lock knob on each corner. Usually the draftsman would find a suitable incline and leave it there for all his work, as it was quite a chore to change it. Each “work station” consisted of this drafting table, and a large, flat, reference desk. The draftsman sat between these, moving back and forth from the reference table (where the job assignment layouts and paperwork were laid flat), and the drafting surface, where he may be doing layout work or detailing a part. I might mention that these “work cubicles” were placed in-line, front to back, and the engineer had to keep an eye on the next persons drafting machines counterweight, else he get whacked by it!

The company knew that the office, especially during the hot summer months, needed air conditioning. At the same time, they decided to replace the obsolete drafting equipment (I believe this happened in the late 70’s-early 80’s). It was quite an expensive undertaking, as there were perhaps forty or so engineers. Each department got new drafting tables and state of the art (for then) Vemco drafting machines (no more counterweights!). These tables were of two different lengths, 6 foot, or 8 foot. The eight foot size went to those who did most of the design layout work, the six footers went to detailers, mostly. Both sizes had motorized vertical adjustments, and manual angle (one handed) clamps. Each department was segregated with five foot walls which allowed for air movement. All of this work had to take place without causing undue delays in our engineering tasks; so most of it was done at night over a several month period.

There were three distinct engineering departments at this time, two mechanical (Grinder and Lathe Products), and one electrical. The Electrical Engineering department covered both product lines. They also had the task of doing design work on PCB’s (printed circuit boards). We did a lot of our own PCB work, and used a “light table” to lay out the actual conductive tracks that connected the various electronic items on those boards.

 

I was fortunate to be involved with several groundbreaking robotics applications at J&L in the late 70’s. I believe the first one was with a company named Thiokol, in Louisiana. They bought two TNC’s and a robot made by AMF-Versatran. The workpiece was an aluminum artillery part called an “ogive”. Basically the nosepiece of an artillery shell. The Versatran unit was basically a point-to-point mechanism, which was capable of picking up a “rough” (unfinished) workpiece from a loading table, pivoting, and then entering the lathe to load same workpiece in the lathe chuck. It worked pretty well once it was programmed. All the motions were straight-line, unlike later robots that could move tangentially. The lathe would machine the tapered OD and do some threading. This was the only AMF robot that we ever sold; it’s possible that it was specified by the customer, but I don’t remember.

The name Fanuc is now widely recognized in the machine tool world; in the beginning they forged a partnership with General Electric, probably to gain market accessibility in the U.S.. Fanuc N.C. controls are now the most widely used ones in the world. But they also became involved with robotics in the 70’s. We sold a few TNC lathes with small, machine mounted Fanuc robots (the AMF unit was floor mounted). I can remember  job for Detroit Diesel, where the robots job was to load a large, hollow, cylindrical forging in the lathe chuck, machine one end, and then unload, placing the workpiece on an open-bottomed, flat table, machined side up. The robot would then ungrip and retract, then come up from below the table, regrip, and reload in the lathe (basically turning the workpiece 180 degrees). The lathe would then machine the unfinished end.

By far the most complicated robotic job we ever did was for International-Harvester. They had developed a hot forging process for differential bevel gears for their small tractors. Their plan was to be able to hot forge the bevel gear teeth accurately enough so that no further gear cutting or shaving would be necessary. But the gears had quite a bit of “flash” on the edges. which hindered their being loaded robotically into our lathe (flash is excess metal squeezed out during the forging process). After several months of quoting and preliminary design work, we ended up with four separate pieces of equipment to do the job: 1) a loading table, where the workpieces came into the nest in known positions. 2) a deburr machine which was suppose to remove the flash (it never did work properly). 3) the TNC lathe which did the actual machining work on the gears (turning and boring). 4) the robot, centrally located, floor mounted, to service (and reach) the first three above. The finished gears were to be placed back on the loading table. I should mention that the original purchase order from I-H was for two complete “nests”, on nest having two TNC’s, and one nest having three. A  total of (5) TNC’s, (2) robots, (2) loading tables, and (2) deburr units.

The project was a very long running one, well over a year in development (during the Christmas season, the electrical techs on the job programmed one robot to mix drinks!).

We didn’t realize it at the time, but I-H was having financial problems, and they declared bankruptcy. They found any excuse to refuse delivery, and J&L ended up selling off the TNC’s to other customers. The deburr units and loading tables were scrapped. A very costly project for J&L.

Jones and Lamson developed and evolved in Windsor, starting out as Robbins and Lawrence, early developers of what was called the “American System” of manufacturing. Basically the ability to mass produce machine parts so that each part is interchangeable with another. Up until this innovation, all machines, be they lathes or rifles or whatever, were individually hand made. The business moved to Springfield in about 1888, and built their first factory on Main Street (the present Senior Center). The larger facility (Plant #1) on Clinton Street was built sometime prior to World War I.

One of the early employees at Jones and Lamson was James Hartness; he was hired out of Massachusetts as a foreman, and became one of the main inventors of various products: the Hartness flat turret lathe, the Hartness Optical Comparator, and assorted thread cutting apparatus. Early in the company history appears the Fay Automatic Lathe, a cam-operated machine which at the time was hailed as a breakthrough in high production turning (this product was the result of a purchase agreement with the Fay Scott Company of Maine).

Several lines of grinding machines were developed over the years, including thread grinders, tap grinders and various form grinders (including one that ground the “Christmas tree” forms on jet turbine blades). I remember seeing a thick book at J&L which had manual drawings of these forms in enlarged views, their various angles and radii marked out. It baffled me at the time why so many variations were necessary, no two seemed alike. All the computations were done longhand, as there were no electronic calculators available at the time. We did have several  Friden mechanical calculators, and using those, and a seven place trig book I called “Hans Hof”, we could slowly get the job done. And of course the slide rule was still being used.

Another product line we had was the Optical Comparator. These were built in the lower plant after 1955 or so, and I really didn’t have any idea just what they consisted of. James Hartness, along with a fellow engineer by the name of Russell Porter, developed this product around 1920 or so.

Thread cutting die heads and taps, and a small precision lathe, rounded out the J&L product line.

So in summary, J&L had a very diversified product line. Which helped to “smooth out” workflow; when one product was down in sales, another may be up. And the sales of spare parts for all these machines was always lucrative. But the introduction of the TNC lathe, and its success, started a re-evaluation process that slowly ate away at this diverse product line. Management was forced to refocus our finite resources in space and manpower to the TNC lathe product line. The future would see J&L sell off or move some products out of town to make room for this.