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BECAUSE of the wide interest in external broaching as a primary production process in automotive plants, the Production Activity of the Society asked for an investigation of the present status of the art so that production executives in general may have a better understanding of the possibilities of the method. For many reasons the entire approach in this paper is based upon the evidence offered by a large and representative group of applications in actual operation in various plants scattered throughout the industry. On this basis, Mr. Geschelin says, this survey of the potentialities of external broaching should be unprejudiced and free of generalities. Moreover, the conclusions drawn are based, more or less, upon demonstrated performance.

IN a discussion of the difficulties that are being overcome in converting automotive plants to the production of war equipment with virtually no new machine tools, Mr. Geschelin emphasizes the difference between the production requirements of an automobile engine and a modern airplane engine by pointing out that: The connecting rod of the Allison airplane engine requires 93 operations compared with 25 for the Cadillac passenger-car engine; the Allison crankshaft requires 80 operations, the Cadillac crankshaft 62; and the Allison cylinder block has 17 pieces compared with a single block for the Cadillac engine. After calling production know-how, “the major contribution of the automotive industry,” Mr. Geschelin draws attention to the fact that the automotive industry also is largely responsible for bringing American production machinery to its present high state of development.