Excellent insight
Just a few queries.
How's the speed/work culture/general OFB employee dedication.
Are the manufacturing and testing facilities updated with new tech ? Or is it the same as installed decades ago.
And any other insights into what goes in normal OFB workday.
Thank you.
Let's first start with the infusion of new tech in the manufacturing sector.
Over the years the various workshops and facilities have been progressively updated with newer equipment with higher productivity, better precision and end product quality and lesser human intervention.
The most interesting of this is the Radial Forging workshop. It was established recently. Earlier the slug/ingot were sent to the New Gun Forge section just after casting. In NGF the rectangular ingots are transformed into cylindrical pieces of the desired dimension. Despite the name NGF is quite old. Here there is a 2650 ton Hydraulic press. The material, workpiece received is first heated in an electrical furnace for a certain time, then transferred to aBogie Hearth oil fired forging Furnace for another round of heating for more than 24 hours. Then the heated workpiece is transferred to the press which takes over an hour to forge the workpiece into a cylindrical piece with the required dimension. The surface finish is average.
Now there's the RFS. Here a new radial forging machine from Austria has been installed in 2011. It takes just 8-10 minutes to forge the required material. It's fully automated with minimal operator intervention.. the previous 24 hour pre heating and heating cycle has been considerably reduced here to a lesser duration. This is an amazing machine and the sight of the entire process will just leave you speechless. Once a front loader unloads the 8-10 m red hot ingot to the loading tray of the machine, claws pick it up and then transfers it to a rolling line. Once the red ingot reaches the hammer section, it is rotated and all the while four hammers/anvils continuously pound on the surface from all four sides thus changing the cross section. This entire process takes a max of 10 min and the surface finish of the finished workpiece is top notch. The precision achieved is also much higher than achieved in NGF.
After heat treatment, every barrel bends considerably. So they need to be heated again and subjected to a bend correction machine. This is a Hydraulic operated machine, from the 60s. It bends certain sections of the barrel in the opposite direction and after many such bends the barrel get straightened. It is manually operated and after every de bending operation you have to manually measure by how much the barrel has been straightened and then repeat it again.
In 2015 a new CNC controlled bend correction machine from Italy was installed. Once you place the barrel it automatically detects and measures the amount of bend and then starts the straightening process. It is much quicker than the manual process but it can't straighten beyond a certain degree. So in case of long barrels first the barrel is straightened manually in the old press upto a degree. Then it is loaded on this new piece of equipment.
Then the furnaces where the heat treatment takes place are replaced with newer updated models after certain periods so as to mitigate obsolescence.
A brand new GHT. Gun heat treatment section with higher capacity fandango automated furnaces is being set up here. I did my internship in '16. I guess the facility is up and running by now.
Now coming to the work culture, let me just say these people aren't exactly workaholics. They are quite relaxed but they aren't slouchs either. At the end of every month the work target in terms of no of barrels to be produced next month is formulated by the management. The workforce operates at a carefully measured pace so as to complete this target. You will never find them completing their targets before targets before time and manufacturing more.
There is a break of one hour after lunch which you won't find in the private sector. This is after the lunch break of 50 minutes.
MSF is one of the two-three installations in India which has a Electro Slag refining unit. ESR. The steel required to manufacture heavy calibre barrels is of the highest quality you will find anywhere and ESR helps you to achieve a purity rate greater than 99.8 percent. ESR supplied steel is used only for FH77B and Dhanush barrels. Electro Slag refining helps you to obtain steel without any non metallic inclusions and Oxygen, Sulphur and Phosphorus impurities. S and P is very bad for steel and espy when the steel is to be used for forging barrels. Sulphur causes hot shortness and phosphorus causes cold shortness in steel and hence must be removed completely. This is where ER comes in.
Since the heat treatment cycle can last anywhere between five to 40 hours, the plant never stops operating. Most of the sections like the ESR and GHT operate 24x7. MSF doesn't sleep. It's a gargantuan beast which lumbers on through the night and never takes a break.
And this is very important to add. In fact more important than the rest of this article. I am a foodie and I must say the food here is excellent. I have done internships in other Central Govt and pvt institutions in this sector and nowhere did I find the meals as wholesome a day delicious as in MSF. And the food is partially subsidised for the employees.
Afterall, an Army can't march on empty stomach, can it?
