Oxfordrail - Adams Radial

[stewartingram]

Is the odd batch size (502?) anything to do with packing? Maybe blue boxes in an outer carton? Or is it to do with QC, where a certain % are expected to fall below standard (common in any production run)?

 

Stewart

Edited November 30, 2014 by stewartingram

[Adams442T]

Is the odd batch size (502?) anything to do with packing? Maybe blue boxes in an outer carton? Or is it to do with QC, where a certain % are expected to fall below standard (common in any production run)?

 

Stewart

 

Not as far as I know Stewart.  We always got 502 turning up on delivery to the UK so not anything to do with QC, and our sets were often in different size boxes so regularly we would have say 800 turn up in one carton and the balance, along with other stuff in another.

 

The Chinese are interesting people to do business with to say the least, and it's always best to tie them down with carefully outlined specific instructions, but they can be inflexible in some areas.  I don't know that any of the Chinese themselves knew why it was 502, but they weren't about to 'lose face' and ask anyone, especially a subordinate!

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

Where I have been involved in light production it's a power of 2 thing.  2⁹ is 512, which means that casting and moulding tooling can be laid out in anything from 1 shot = 1 component, to 1 shot = 512 components. So you can lay out the parts as efficiently as possible for a minimum number of operations with  10 volume capacities available. The slight excess over 500 allows for a small amount of loss or damage in the process. You might cast the main chassis blocks in fours, 128 shots, but a separate much smaller gearbox part that will be mounted on the chassis in 32s, which needs16 shots, and so on.

[MikeOxon]

The number could be to do with Feng Shui or other concerns about lucky and unlucky numbers.  Many Chinese tower blocks have missing floor numbers (though not 13, in their case) for this reason.

[mikeharvey22]

Somehow I always had the number 504 in my mind which is 42 dozen. Why? I know not.

Edited December 1, 2014 by mikeharvey22

[Tim Hall]

I was told by a retailer recently that it was a package size issue. Didn't believe him particularly though, cos there are lots of different box sizes.......

[Bernard Lamb]

Where I have been involved in light production it's a power of 2 thing.  2⁹ is 512, which means that casting and moulding tooling can be laid out in anything from 1 shot = 1 component, to 1 shot = 512 components. So you can lay out the parts as efficiently as possible for a minimum number of operations with  10 volume capacities available. The slight excess over 500 allows for a small amount of loss or damage in the process. You might cast the main chassis blocks in fours, 128 shots, but a separate much smaller gearbox part that will be mounted on the chassis in 32s, which needs16 shots, and so on.

Then the fun starts when one cavity, or more, is damaged.

At what point do you take the mould out for repair rather than carry on producing one, or more, part(s) less from each cycle.

With many parts required at the same tine for the same job the calculations can be interesting to say the least.

Particularly when you have to serve two masters with different priorities, one interested in production deadlines and the other interested in costs.

It is a heck of a lot more difficult these days than it was when Hornby Dublo were banging out one piece die cast bodies.

Glad not to be involved in that sort of headache any more.

Bernard

[adrianbs]

Hi All,   I rather think that in the case of moulding sets of parts for a loco, the tooling is much more like that of an Airfix kit, i.e. all of the parts for one loco in one or more moulds.if the parts do not require multi-way slides, i.e for parts with just a front and back like a kit.  If there are enough duplicated parts then perhaps that mould would just have one of each and the production run would be doubled.  The cost of making moulds is such that there would be no good reason for making a multi impression tool of one or two parts as the runs would be very short and the tools would need to be set up each time.  The cost of setting up tools and test running can be more than the cost of actually producing a small batch of components in the order of 1000 off  ( less than a days production )..

 

   Complex parts like the main body of a loco will almost certainly be made on a much more sophisticated (and expensive ) machine and the tool may only contain a single component although it might be possible to add another one or two parts.   The only tooling which might be multi impression would be for identical components required in very large numbers across a whole range of different products, for example model car tyres in the case of Oxford Diecast.  

 

    A classic case of the use of multi impression tools causing havoc was the Mainline J.72 which many will remember had disastrous running problems initially.  I know because I had one of the first which "waddled" itself off the track. Having investigated the problem I found that the diecast wheels were made in a 6 impression tool, each with an identification number stamped on the back.  Had all the cavities been absolutely identical there would have been no problems but the cavities varied, with the axle stubs not always concentric with the rims nor in relation to the crank pin holes.  Some locos ran quite well as they had a random selection of the 6 wheels which just happened to match, others, like mine had the worst possible selection so that the coupling rods jammed. To get them to work the axle holes were hugely enlarged but although the wheels went round they lifted themselves off the track sufficiently to derail even on straight track. !!!  Not a good start for a newcomer to the market, I wonder if that loco ever had profit figures in the black for the few years Mainline existed.                                  Regards all adrianbs

[pete_mcfarlane]

Somehow I always had the number 504 in my mind which is 42 dozen. Why? I know not.

Don't some Eastern cultures use a base-12 counting system rather than base-10? (12 coming from a single hand with 4 fingers with 3 segments each).

[250BOB]

Don't some Eastern cultures use a base-12 counting system rather than base-10? (12 coming from a single hand with 4 fingers with 3 segments each).

 

Some Western cultures did too once upon a time...

 

Remember 12 pence in a shilling................eggs in a dozen...............12 inches in a foot.

[Ron Ron Ron]

Why 504?

 

The answer may lie behind mysterious Oriental inscrutability perhaps?

 

504 is 12x the answer to that ultimate question, about Life, the Universe and Everything !

504 is therefore in balance with nature, life and the Universe itself.

 

It might also explain why Hornby's randomly sized large batches have thrown the company's fortunes out of kilter.

 

 

 

Happy Ying and Yang from Ron

[Oldddudders]

I think 504 was used some years back by Peugeot.

 

They have some sort of world patent on car designations of three digits with a 0 in the middle.

[Ozexpatriate]

Don't some Eastern cultures use a base-12 counting system rather than base-10? (12 coming from a single hand with 4 fingers with 3 segments each).

Some Western cultures did too once upon a time...

 

Remember 12 pence in a shilling................eggs in a dozen...............12 inches in a foot.

And we all still do - 12 hours of daylight + 12 hours of night time = 24 hours per day.

 

Also reflected in 360° per circle = 30 x 12.

 

There's lot's of base 16 going on under our very noses in our electronics too.

[John M Upton]

I think 504 was used some years back by Peugeot.

 

They have some sort of world patent on car designations of three digits with a 0 in the middle.

 

Although Peugeot did get caught out when they tried to call a model the 007 and a certain Mr Broccoli sent a nice letter from his lawyers resulting in the car being renamed the 1007

Edited December 1, 2014 by John M Upton

[railroadbill]

And we all still do - 12 hours of daylight + 12 hours of night time = 24 hours per day. Also reflected in 360° per circle = 30 x 12.There's lot's of base 16 going on under our very noses in our electronics too.

Hexadecimal is base 16 it uses 0 to 9 and A to F for different values, ie B is 11 in base 10.

 

There is also octal which is to base 8 and uses 0 to 7.

 

Hex was used by IBM and Octal by ICL operating systems for mainframe computers back in my day (perhaps it still is!)

Bill

[bacon butty]

Hi

 

Could it be down to quality? Quality departments typically work on parts per million. That seems a huge number compared to a run of say 502/504 as has been quoted, I've also seen runs of 512 else ware (maybe not model railways, it could have been die cast cars)... but what the manufacturer never says is how many is initially actually sold and how many they may keep for if something goes wrong.

My guess from reading this forum everything that comes in from model railway manufacturers in this country will have at the very least one item sent back with a problem.

The manufacturer then has a little fall back - not much but some.

The items that are then sent back to them can have other parts reused as we know has happened before. The company would probably write the cost off rather than the long and costly experience of getting a credit note for something that may have cost £30 or £40 to make. If you take into account it could be a motor that was bought in from a subcontractor it gets more complicated.

ie if Oxford get 504 locos and 2 get returned to them with say dodgy motors they could probably ask for a credit note for faulty parts from their unit in China, who then in turn ask for a credit note from their supplier that may even be somewhere like Taiwan. 

 

Regards

 

Stuart 

[Roy P]

Although Peugeot did get caught out when they tried to call a model the 007 and a certain Mr Broccoli sent a nice letter from his lawyers resulting in the car being renamed the 1007

 

Would James Bond have been "zero-zero-seven" if Hornby had insisted?

 

RP

[Horsetan]

Would James Bond have been "zero-zero-seven" if Hornby had insisted?

Would EON Productions have allowed them to call their pre-DCC system "Double-O-One"?

Edited December 1, 2014 by Horsetan

[pete_mcfarlane]

Also reflected in 360° per circle = 30 x 12.

 

I thought that was because there were 360 days in the year (at least if you were in Egypt about 3000 years ago before they had more accurate ways of determining the length of the year).

[Ozexpatriate]

I thought that was because there were 360 days in the year (at least if you were in Egypt about 3000 years ago before they had more accurate ways of determining the length of the year).

Perhaps - most of the internet answers I saw are that it is based on Babylonian mathematics. Apparently the Babylonians used base-60. 

 

360 is very close to the average of ~365.25 and 354.37 (12 lunar cycles).

 

There seems to be some consensus that the Egyptians came up with 12 hours of daylight. (They were initially of variable length based on the seasons.)

Edited December 2, 2014 by Ozexpatriate

[adrianbs]

Hi All   When can we get back on topic, I am having withdrawal symptoms with nothing to criticize !!!    regards  adrianbs

[Oldddudders]

Hi All   When can we get back on topic, I am having withdrawal symptoms with nothing to criticize !!!    regards  adrianbs

A sad day indeed.

[DavidH]

A sad day indeed.

 

Egyptian or Babylonian?

[Joseph_Pestell]

Although Peugeot did get caught out when they tried to call a model the 007 and a certain Mr Broccoli sent a nice letter from his lawyers resulting in the car being renamed the 1007

 

Pity they did not just cancel the project. A fairly pointless car which never sold well (very pricey) and must have cost PSA some big losses.

[PenrithBeacon]

29 pages, 708 replies and no model! Is this a record for RMweb?

 

Regards