The Daily Reporter from Dover, Ohio • Page 15

Page 15, Dover, Ohio Saturday, January $5, iM USCARAMA Doily Reporter Magazine Section I By Joe Woerdeman Daily Reporter Staff Writer could call the chief operation at.General Electric's Dover Wire Plant a giant mechanic taffy pull. There's milling and the sifting of the ingredients that will make up the molybdenum metal be used. These then are pressed and strengthened by heating (at a GE plant away from here) into 21-inch long ingots (bars) weighing about 12 pounds. And then the pull begins. You wouldn't believe it, but in a continued process of heating and pounding and; drawing round dies, one''of those ingots that does the whole course can be pulled'out to a wire 400 'miles long' and one-third the width of a human hair" (.0012 'inches to be.accurate).

That oversimplifies the highly- technical and partially-secretive operation, of course, but it helps to emphasize the fascinating work carried on inside GE's 'molybdenum wire plant and one of the few plants in the world devoted exclusively to the of molybdenum- pr'oducts. fcVcryonc 'who' drove along S. "Wooster. Avenue in Dover during 'this 'recent Christmas season knows where the torated' GE-plant But-'only a few years back company officials were constantly perturbed to find that area residents did not even know there was such a place in Dover. Actually, GE moved into the Wooster Ave.

plant back in 1944 when it took over the facilities formerly by American Sheet and Tin Plate Co. to produce molybdenum wire for parts in walkie-talkie radios during World War II. In 1946, GE purchased the factory for an experimental and developmental operation. Four years later in August, the place had begun full-scale wire draw- ingpr oduction. And in a new building brought the manufacturing space to 3 times that of 1944.

This past year, General Electric invested an estimated $225,000 to expand and improve the local plant's facilities, including $75,000 rolling mill. William Patton of Strasburg just recently became manager of the. plant that employs a 40- member office force and approximately 160 plant workers, 40 per cent of whom are women. Doyer Wire Plant is pn6 GE Ohio and belongs' specifically to' the La.nip Division, headquarters 'is at well-known, Nela Cleveland. Its main business is.

manufacture of molybdenum wire for lamps of all kinds and electronic tubes. Molybdenum and its alloys have become vitally important to electronic and space-age manufacture. It is a very difficult metal to process, but at the same time, is extremely valuable for its strength maintained under extremely high temperatures. Charles Anderson, supervisor of employe and community relations at Dover Wire, will explain on a guided tour that the plant products are supplied, not only for GE, but for numerous industries engaged in electronics and aero-space projects, including military defense. From every phase of the multiple of the molybdenum powder, rolling-and swaging the ingots into bars 90 feet long-'and 3-16 of an inch in diameter, drawing wire to fine diameters, and; qualities, fabricating of numerous molybdenum parts needed'for critical electronic are sold to other industries and manufacturers to be further processed for a particular use.

Molybdenum hag a value of See GENERAL, Page 23 Wayne Kiser of RD 2, Dover, pushes a 700-pound drum away from the huge blender that handles 5000 kilos (10,000 pounds) molybdenum metal in powder form, in a process consisting of milling, sifting, bleaching and'blending. the to which the the -v' A section moiy wire traversing the comp pass through 44 machines. ete process will.