I joined Davy Systems around 1974 or thereabouts, Coming from a research background I was used to freely expressing
ideas which was not always well received in such a traditional industry. I particularly liked swapping ideas with
John Young MSc and with Robin Clark MA, very clever people.
Robin was a chap who thrived on problems; if you got stuck with tricky computing you simply mentioned it in
passing and the next day a tidy little solution appeared.
I remember arriving, in the company of John, at a hot rolling mill in Milan Italy and the manager recognised
John by reputation; he said " It is-a OK, I have Plentya of Da Rolls". I thought he was joking but no he was not.
John had been responsible for the introduction of hydraulic control at a rivals mill before the science was fully
understood; he had broken every roll they had.
So why do you think a fellow with such a destructive reputation was welcome? Because that mill now produced
better steel than they did; he was interested in what it would do, not what it cost. We retro-fitted gauge-meter
to his mill without so much as bruising a roll.
It was impressive the way that Davy Systems allowed young engineers to commission live mills on their own,
making their own mistakes and fixing them under the glare of customers eyes; this resulted in confident experienced
engineers very quickly.
My first job was to produce a novel control system for an experimental mill that crushed steel powder into
wide stainless strip which was then sintered and cold rolled. The mill worked at 1400 tonnes and used glass hard rolls
that must never be allowed to touch. I smashed the first set; that was my baptism by fire. They were very expensive;
oh well eggs and omelets spring to mind.
We had trouble with some of the design and I suggested sticking parts of it together. Mechanical Engineering
were not best pleased with such radical suggestions; but it was the way it was done in the end. One of the more
forward thinking designers said that if they made another Craw it would be made out of modern materials, after some
discussion we agreed that we should get in touch with the designers of Americas Cup Yachts; they know how to make very
strong fibre glass hulls with strong points robust enough to hold a mast going round the horn; ideal technology for
our needs.
Unfortunately, the mill control system became unstable the first time they ran full powder flow at it; I had
seen broken glass armour that had been hit from shards flying out of a failing mill so, when my attempts to get the
plant engineers to recognise the danger failed, I pressed the red button and stopped the whole show. British Steel
banned me from that plant; no gratitude some people. I expect that a rating ringing down the speed on Titanic after smelling
ice would have received the same rebuff from Captain Smith; ego's are easily hurt.
Does anyone else remember this very odd mill or what happened to it? It did work but was put into mothballs
before I left.
