Throughout the life of the Laboratories, developments across the spectrum of technologies with which GEC has been concerned have posed problems in the materials field. It was always the policy that, in order to meet increasingly stringent requirements for new and traditional materials in terms of performance, quality and continuity of supply, it was necessary to undertake back ground research on materials and process development. It was often desirable and sometimes necessary to go a long way towards manufacture in order to present an ultimate supplier with specifications which were realistic rather than hypothetical in terms of properties and manufacturability. In the same period, metallurgy was itself undergoing profound changes, moving out of empiricism and traditional academic subservience to chemistry. There was a continuous flow of basic information from an increasing number of centres of excellence for academic research in metals, and Wembley's links with them assisted the Laboratories in using its increasing knowledge of material properties, structure and processing (and the relations between them) in meeting the materials requirements of various laboratory groups and of Company units. The ready accessibility of the wide range of scientific and engineering knowledge of the Wembley staff also enabled a multi-disciplinary approach to be applied to materials work.

Inspec keywords: metallurgy

Other keywords: multidisciplinary approach; company units; material structure; ultimate supplier; academic research; manufacturability; process development; engineering knowledge; Wembley link; continuous information flow; various laboratory group; technology spectrum; GEC; scientific knowledge; material requirement; academic subservience; metallurgy; material processing; material property

Subjects: Metallurgical industries