Manufacturing Precision Fittings (With Commentary - 1957)

This 16mm reel from my collection is a work print and has no soundtrack, but the unedited rushes show many workstations and production steps in manufacturing hydraulic lines and fittings from raw stock in the 1950's. Filmed in gorgeous Kodachrome, many of the shots are not ideally focused and many are underexposed, but still an intriguing document to a largely bygone era of American manufacturing. As always this was transferred using my own Telecine. OH - and you get a little bonus at the end. What is it? Hell if I know! Enjoy!
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[@turboslag]

Ok, so this is an Aeroquip factory and they are producing AN fittings and hose, not cable. The fittings are made from aluminium, not steel, so are being anodised not plated, the anodising being red and blue. The AN system was devised for aircraft in WW2, AN stands for Army Navy. They were made from aluminium for lightness, airvraft were full of hydraulics and complex fuel systems then, so of they were the normal industrial steel fittings it would have added much extra weight. An interesting point about that hose cutting machine, the blade is a knife edge, so no teeth. It can be used dry for intermittent use, but in series production they were obviously using water to keep the blade cool and eliminate airborne dust. After the end of WW2 there was a huge surplus of this hose system and stocks were sold off very cheaply in surplus stores and quickly adopted by the race car world, as it was massively superior to normal automotive fluid handling systems. And it is still in common use today by the race car and tuned car world. Genuine Aeroquip is extremely expensive so after market manufacturers like Earls performance and many others make it more cheaply, although not exactly cheap!

[@rileyk99]

AN fittings come in steel as well

[@TinkeringJohn]

I was thinking the same thing when Fran was calling them cables. I was a machine repairman at the Buick plant in Flint Michigan. I would have to make my own hydraulic lines when they went bad. I would have to cut a piece of hose the proper length from a spool of it with that knife edge blade cutter. The fittings were crimped onto the ends of the hose with a hydraulic unit that has dies to squeeze the fitting. The crimper with the dies looks similar to a collet used on a lathe. It looks like the fittings made in the video are the type that are threaded onto the hose. The inside of the outer wall of the fitting has screw type threads. We used those type fittings on the big hoses that were used on the large hydraulic power units.

[@turboslag]

@@TinkeringJohn You are correct, the AN fittings are screw assemble type, so called re-useable although they rarely were! Difficult to describe but the inner part that inserts into the hose had a tapered knife edge that cuts into the inner wall of the hose as the outer nut sleeve is tightened onto the inner. So a thin walled tube is cut into the inner wall of the hose which is compressed by an inner spigot of the hose fitting, thus forming a very secure pressure seal. Difficult to explain but easy to understand when actually looking at an AN fitting. There is another version of AN fitting, introduced by an Aeroquip competitor,that doesn't have the inner tapered knife feature, but relies on just a tapered inner spigot. That was probably to get around the patent. The worst part about assembling these fittings onto the hose is puncturing you finger tips on the needle sharp wire braid of the hose, nasty!

[@TinkeringJohn]

@@turboslag I only dealt with the screw type fittings once, and I don't remember if they were the ones that cut into the hose. We had to reuse the ones from the bad hose since we didn't have any new ones. We had to install them by hand, so we put a 10ft piece of electrical conduit on a pipe wrench and walked around in circles at the other end of the pipe. It took 3 of us to do it. I think the pipe bent a little too. If the fitting cut into the hose, I can see why it was so hard to get them on. The crimp type of fittings also has what look like threads on the inside to grip the outer wall of the hose, but they are rings and not spiraled like screw threads. The inner tube/spigot of the fittings was a tight fit pushing them on the hose, so I had to dip them in oil to lubricate them. Yes, I got poked a few times by the wire braiding.

[@turboslag]

@@TinkeringJohn Reusables are ok upto about 1" or 25mm bore, larger than that they are a pig to work with! Pallet swaging, or crimping as it's also known, is the way to go on industrial hose assemblies, given that a swaging machine is available, but over 1.5" that also becomes hard work! Back in the day we had a family business here in the UK, dealing with a wide spectrum of industrial hose. Pur most impressive machine was an internal swaging machine for industrial hose, not hydraulic, that could internally swage upto 12" bore hose! That was a very nerve racking process! The tolerances were very critical, which on bores over 4" was a nightmare to set up. Make a mistake and the very expensive fitting was scrap! I don't recall the exact forces involved but the machine was rated at upto 100 tons pull! Watching it expand a steel fitting with a 8mm or 5/16" wall was a sight to behold!

[@mikeythehat6693]

You mention the dreariness of the workplace and mindnumbing boredom of the process worker . That just brought back all sorts of memories for me from my time as a teenager working on production lines . It is exactly how you imagined , so much so that my experience of it was enough to send me back to school to improve my situation . I was assembling electric motors on an assembly line and every day was like an eternity , by the end it was all I could do to purposely get fired so that I could get Govt. assistance to return to education . At least , I suppose , there was that silver lining .

[@normanknutsen8253]

Doing data entry was what got me to finish my degree.

[@zsigmondkara]

7:00 It's called an optical comparator, it's a very useful piece of equipment! Very nice video as always, Fran!

[@trespire]

Profile or optical comperator. Used in spot checking the process, and also final QC. Possible to measure down to 0,01mm.

[@problemwithauthority]

Some of the real old guys referred to it as a "shadow graph". But I learned it as optical comparator.

[@TinkeringJohn]

I was going to mention that, but figured someone had already said it. We used them at Buick in the machine shop. They were also used on the production floor to check parts coming off a machining operation.

[@thetwistedsock3253]

I used to use a large "shadowgraph" at GKN.

[@BobDarlington]

Wish I had one in my shop.

[@KillerKlipsch]

We need more Frans in the world.

[@KensSmallEngineRepair]

"Come with me and you'll be in a world of OSHA violations!" I know it's before 1970 but I just had to! Love your vids Fran!

[@hmw-ms3tx]

Hello Fran. I think the 'two' engine jet plane in the picture is actually a six engine B-47 bomber. On each wing they had a double engine nacelle (like the B-52 uses) and a single engine mounted outboard of this. Three engines on a wing, six in total. Ken

[@sleat]

Oops, wrote mine before I saw yours. I agree, it's a B-47!

[@CARLiCON]

B-47A

[@cashflyer]

Not cables. At 2 min, the guy is cutting hydraulic lines and using a wet saw so the rubber does not heat up and melt onto the saw. Also the hoses likely have a steel braid in the liner. The logo on the hex stock at 3:42 is for Aeroquip. Zsigmond mentioned the optical comparator. I believe the machine at 8:40 is a "rotary swage". 13:40 .. every man is proud of his rod stock.

[@vigilantdisciple5569]

So Fran. That piece of equipment you have as the thumbnail picture for this video. The thing that you mention reminded you of a projection screen in a Soyuz capsule. We still use to this day in manufacturing. The common term for it is a shadowgraph, but the technical term for it is an optical comparator. Although the newest models are digital not much has changed about them since the earlier part of the 20th century. In your video you can see the axial lines and the graduations around the circumference of the screen. Those knobs on the right are used to rotate the screen and the graduations are degrees. In it's most basic way that can be used to measure relative angles of a projected profile. The lens has certain magnifications so that you know how much the image is scaled from 0. So for example you would be looking at the profile at precise focus at 10 or 20x. Today's uses are many. For instance you could print out a profile from a cad system on mylar with a certain scale e.g. 10x with inside and outside tolerance profiles scaled accordingly, and place it on the screen. Then when you set your comparator at 10x and bring a complicated part profile into focus, you would know if the profile was within tolerance visually quite quickly and easily just by looking at where the objects profile lay relative to those tolerance bands. Rather than running a scanning CMM stylus around the part and then looking at arrays of numbers on a printout of those results. Which as you can imagine takes much much longer and can be difficult to interpret.

[@DarthVader1977]

I'm so glad I found this channel, you are one of my favorite KZbinrs. :)

[@ghrey8282]

That sure brought back a bunch of shop memories… Thanks Fran

[@uapnz0698]

Ok Fran your voiceovers are amazing! Absolutely entertainment.

[@SomeOne-mp6ym]

Hi Fran! I rediscovered your channel!! So interesting!! Thank you.

[@Braindomme]

Cowboy hat lady means business!

[@FotosbyFrankie]

Your commentary is absolutely hysterical! 😂

[@rareimpalass1966]

I work in a metrology lab. We have an optical comparator that looks almost identical. We use mylar overlay on the screen to check contour masters.

[@deerfish3000]

@6:45 that machine is called an optical comparator; I know this because I use one everyday at work. You set the part you are measuring on a table that has a light in front of the part. This shadow image is then projected onto the main screen through a series of magnifying lenses and mirrors inside the machine. You can then control both the X and Y axis of the table and move the part and record whatever measurements required to make sure the part is within tolerance.

[@goodun2974]

I don't know if any of my fellow electronics nerds here follow the Curious Marc channel on KZbin, but he posted a video yesterday about the 2 guys who put together a beautiful new "coffee table" book that shows Cross-sectional microscope photographs of electronic components , including resistors, transistors, capacitors, transformers and even vacuum tubes , not to mention displays and integrated circuits. The video shows them slicing or grinding away layers of epoxy encapsulation to show the components within. It's a really cool video and a beautiful book from what I could see.

[@paulscarborough1001]

There is an invoice shown @ 2:32 dated May 16 1967 stamped on it.... The guy taking measurements sure looks like a 1957 date.... Curiosities... I doubt if the video spans 10 years of technology.. Amazingly, as far as I know, Aeroquip still makes fittings and hydraulic parts to this day...

[@N2YTA]

I noticed that 1967 date.

[@FranLab]

the stamp font and overlaping numbers just makes that 5 look like a 6. It's 57.

[@JuanKenobiObi]

Fran must have a better view on the lower left quad of that character to see its a 5.

[@SeanBZA]

End film was likely added so the editor could have a generous amount of film stock on the roll for splicing the production film, and they used a reel of film they had already which was surplus, instead of using expensive new film or leader stock. Old stock film, or extra copies that were made but never used, sitting in the lab as splice film to extend the reel so it could be handled safely without damaging either the beginning or end of the reel, as those are the most likely to be damaged by misaligned projectors or to get the take up and supply reels to engage fully without marking the film. Likely this was the second half of a longer reel, with the short leader there from needing to have something to use as leader, with the other earlier shots having been used, and these became surplus to the editor. Not quite cutting room floor, but probably was destined for it, but instead was kept aside for some reason, then lay forgotten for decades unopened and unused.

[@trespire]

Those are hoses, as in hydraulic hose. They don't push around electrons so they're not cables 😁

[@vernmoen5889]

Ahh, Aeroquip AN fittings. I had the numbering system memorized early in my career in planes. They were fun to work and would make special stuff if you asked.

[@SeanBZA]

War time flourescent fittings, stamped steel with a small ballast tray, and with the tubes having bayonet cap ends. instead of the pins that were becoming common in the 1950's. Old fittings that were kept in operation, because the old halophosphate tubes had so much mercury in them that they would run for decades with no problems.

[@SamLease]

keep the voice overs please thanks Fran

[@CARLiCON]

"Federal Agents vs. Underworld, Inc. (1949) is a 12-episode black-and-white film serial produced by Republic Pictures during July 1948 and released in January 1949, an original screenplay written collaboratively by Royal K. Cole, Basil Dickey, William Lively and Sol Shor as a crime story with elements of "the mysterious Orient" incorporated in the plot." Federal Agents vs. Underworld, Inc. was one of twenty-six Republic serials re-released as a film on television in 1966. The title of the film was changed to Golden Hands of Kurigal. This version was cut down to 100-minutes in length.[1] Chapter titles Thirteen minutes and 20 seconds long, unless otherwise specified The Golden Hands (20 minutes) Criminals' Lair Death in Disguise Fatal Evidence The Trapped Conspirator Wheels of Disaster The Hidden Key The Enemy's Mouthpiece The Stolen Hand Unmasked - a re-cap chapter Tombs of the Ancients The Curse of Kurigal

[@Dave.O]

Thanks. I'd looked it up, but not to this degree. I wonder if it is on KZbin, or some such.

[@CARLiCON]

@@Dave.O yes it is on YT

[@TinkeringJohn]

At 4:05 those machines are referred to as bar machines or screw machines (not making screws in the video). They are either Acme Gridley's or Conomatic's. They are multi-station lathes. The end of the machine shown is where the long lengths of stock are loaded. The video doesn't show it, but the raw stock would stick out past the end of the machine until enough of it was used. When a lot is sticking out, they would bang around on the tubes that contain them as they turn making it noisy.

[@robertducanis4448]

I believe those 6-spindle automatic screw machines at the 4:05 mark are Greenlee's. Definitely not Acme and pretty sure not Cone nor New Britain. Aeroquip's big competitors were Eaton and Parker-Hannifin. Parker-Hannifin used National-Acme almost exclusively. Our company made millions of parts for their Parflex, Instrumentation, and Hose Products divisions. We ran primarily National-Acmes (50+) and few Conomatics and Wickmans, and single spindle Brown & Sharpes. Our CNC equipment was Mori-Seiki, Mazak, and and Kitamura.

[@cdorcey1735]

That trailer, Golden Hands of Kurigal, is described by imdb as a 12-segment serial edited into a feature film. 1966. "Rotten Tomatoes", though, dates it to 1949 (maybe for the original serial?).

[@mysticmarble94]

As a millenial I really appreciate the commentary 👏👏

[@runnerr000]

As a human - I appreciate Fran❤

[@aldntn]

Looks like an Aeroquip mark on the hex bar.

[@jobkneppers]

Fran, thank you for sharing this historical content with us. One fact I learned during my professional live is that woman are better equipped for detailed, intricate, work. It's a proven quality that men don't own as much. No political statement here just a fact. We are all are different that's why we are the same I guess. Thank you! A fan, all the best, Job

[@normanknutsen8253]

Doesn't that mean they would better at quality control.

[@hotpuppy1]

Looks like might be "Aeroquip". At the beginning they were stamping 'A' logo on the blanks. Still in business today, but I'm sure it is almost all automated with robots.

[@jamesbaranowski6050]

oh...that optical projection thing?...it's called an Optical Comparator....I have used them

[@DavoidJohnson]

Yep plenty of us have been in that factory situation. My first two jobs were like that in 1963. The weeks pay was less than the bus fare, so cycling was the only option. You still get jobs like that but most of them have shipped to the far East where they are still going through their industrial revolution.

[@tomservo5007]

2:35 , if I squint, there's a date stamp May 16, 1967

[@00Skyfox]

And notice with all that machinery and high pressure fluids, not one person was wearing safety glasses. Unless someone had prescription glasses on, they had no protection at all.

[@VMATT500C]

Cool vid. Looks like 1967 @ 2:32.

[@normanknutsen8253]

Very nice video commentary. The first two engine airliner was the French Sud Aviation Caravelle, 60 to 90 seat jet. First shrt haul jet, used the cockpit of the famous British Comet jet airliner. Went into production, per wikipedia 1958. Later versions on late 60s had up to 110 seats.

[@filmrullen]

Hey there, Fran. I like your commentaries. It made the movie better. Now, about this short movie clip... Could there be something about the word "adapted"? Maybe they recreated it in 1966 from some older material.

[@biggerandbetterthings7222]

lol so many thankless jobs, the good ole days! i don't think things have changed!

[@marting4042]

If you look at the paperwork shown at 2:34 in this video, there's a date stamp that looks like May 16 1967 - The overlap of the 9 and the 6 appear to produce a consistent thickness of line that would be notched if the 6 were a 5. The unrelated clip at the end is from 1966, does this better correlate the date at 2:34? Is it possible that your interpretation of the date on the document at 7:27 is because that is the date that document was started? There do appear to be many rows of data on that form, some of which might also feature dates, but it's hard to tell.

[@Lethgar_Smith]

A comment about fashion and hair styles corresponding with decades. I noticed back before the turn of the century that fashion did not change at the start of a decade. That which we think of as the 50s actually began around 55 and lasted into the early 60s. That which we think of as the 60s didnt really get started until 65 and lasted up till almost 75. And that which we think as the 70s really got started around 75 and lasted into the early 80s And the 80s lasted into the early 90s. After the 90s fashion and hairstyles fragmented greatly and became less rigid and demanded less conformity. So now it is much harder to tell what the decade you are looking at in TV and film.

[@sleat]

15:25 What airplane? Given the time period, and the length ratios, fuselage and wing shape, wing-sweep, and coloring of the aircraft, I'm 99.9% sure it's a B-47 bomber. That had a total of 6 J47-GE-25 engines, not 4 or two. Good ol' General Electrric! The funny thing was, the inner 4 engines were paired 2 per side in one large nacelle each, making them quite big, but the last two were mounted far out on the wings, maybe 3/4th of the way out to the tips in skinny long nacelles, and the J47 was quite small, so they're barely visible in the photo, but you can see them just in the appropriate place if you know where to look. The B-47 could carry quite large drop-tanks between the inner and outer engine nacelles, but not in this photo.

[@CARLiCON]

right on..definitely a Boeing B-47A, it's not a painting/artwork, that's an official Boeing photograph. That model had built in rocket-assisted-take-off RATO, of you go to the wiki page, you'll see the RATO exhaust ports in the rear fuselage

[@Derpy1969]

The Golden Hands of Kurigal has an entry on IMDB as an edited “movie” from a 1949 serial.

[@ferulebezel]

In that thriller footage at the end, from the women's hair and clothes it looked like it was just after WWII.

[@kentpeterson8082]

1940s Kodachrome movie and slide film had an ASA (ISO) of 8 and 12. The early 1960s brought Kodachrome II which had an ASA of 25. Unlike the later released Ektachrome films, Kodachrome could in no way be push processed for an increased ISO speed the way the Ektachromes could. The two films and their chemical processing were vastly different. Kodachrome had more stable color dyes than the Ektachrome films too.

[@googleuser7454]

These old videos are very fascinating. Interesting how the work was so manual. And it is interesting how work was gendered in various industries even when physical strength wasn't a factor. IIRC there was a strike at a car manufacturer that involves the women that sewed that leather (I am fuzzy on the details). And of course women and computer cores

[@emmajacobs5575]

I suspect you’re thinking of the strike at the UK Ford factory in Dagenham by the sewing machinists. It was actually over a re-grading of their jobs to a lower level rather than being strictly about equal pay; however, it was a bit of a catalyst for further action for equal pay which resulted in the Equal Pay Act of 1970. (In 2021, the gender pay gap was *still* around 15% …)

[@googleuser7454]

@@emmajacobs5575 Thanks! I'm glad to get the full context of what happened

[@chrisbenedictum1]

Hi Fran. Lol, assembly... been there done that. After electronics engineering school... before repairs (music instruments) Anyways lol. Love the videos, 😎🤘✌.

[@daveogarf]

Fran, it's really hard to tell, but I think that the picture may be of a Boeing B-47 Stratojet, which had pods of two engines on each wing, and an additional outboard engine, for a total of six. I understand that the Stratojet was a real hot rod, and flew like a large fighter jet, despite being able to carry a nuclear payload.

[@jimmcmahon217]

I've been told by people who would know that a lightly-loaded Boeing 727 flew similarly.

[@jamesbaranowski6050]

looks like Aeroquip Company...ain't cable, it's tubing. And those machines are called screw machines. That is pre CNC screw machines.

[@tomservo5007]

"Imagine doing this all day", and we complain about manufacturing jobs going overseas

[@bobair2]

Soul destroying shit is still a problem in 2022.

[@Chrisamic]

16:14 I'm wondering if that aircraft isn't a concept for an early 707 design. Originally it was a two engine concept but the FAA would not certify a two engine design for inter-continental flights. The photo is very hard to see, but it appears to have the very narrow swept wing and low slung engine pods of a Boeing design. Eventually the FAA allowed certification of three engine inter continental aircraft, with the proviso that it could still fly if it lost only one engine - and so the 727 was born.

[@Ale.K7]

As others have said, it appears to be a B-47.

[@mnoxman]

Even in "modern" (aka post 1985) production documented you will see things out of (soft) focus or sections blurred. This is Faux protection for some process or step.

[@jamesbaranowski6050]

uh...two jet engines?......Me-262 [1942] Gloster Meteor [1942]

[@jamestrebillcock4718]

7mins in is a shadow graph

[@neffk]

Those are screw machines with bar feeders

[@SuperShecky]

To this very day... Yup the lower paid assembly work is still dominated by women in many places. Inspection/metrology has the men. You can tell who the crappiest wage earners were in these old films simply by gender and race.

[@israeldlr4365]

upload no comment ?

[@frankyhoward9197]

are you married fran

[@majorhavoc9693]

Fran, I'm assuming you're not married by the lack of a ring. How can someone so smart and pretty be still single? Must be by choice as it has been with me up until recently. Starting to rethink my decision though... Just found your channel and subscribed.

[@BobDarlington]

My wife doesn't wear a ring either. OCD in her case. Stuff touching her skin and all that.

[@motherjoon]

Do you think that the ADHD epidemic and shortened attention spans would pretty much make this kind of work impossible today? Even if the workplace were to be made much safer, I don’t think this level of human labour and attention can be replicated today in the west.

[@SomeOne-mp6ym]

I was thinking the same thing!!! No way.

[@ASilentS]

Should humans be doing such repetitive and monotonous labor? That's the real question.

[@motherjoon]

@@ASilentS they did it back then and they mostly had stable home lives after. Something drastically changed as generations were renewed

[@ASilentS]

@@motherjoon Yes, everything was better in the 50s. Nope, no improvements since then. All downhill from there. /s

[@motherjoon]

@@ASilentS maybe improvement doesn’t have to be all technological. Maybe cognitive and spiritual states count into the improvement equation as well