“Mr. Zuckerman's opinions on the quality of license built vs original manufactured items is only his opinion. I have made a living helping license manufacturers get their quality up to factory standards. The idea that the original design and manufacturing team cannot meet the standards they themselves set is clearly incorrect”.
My comments were based on my tour of duty at Agusta (close to three years). I became aware of the extremely high level of quality of the metal work, the methods of construction and the amount of effort made in the construction of the fuselages and other elements of the helicopter. At the time I was at Agusta, I had worked at Hughes Helicopters on the Apache, the Cheyenne at Lockheed, three years at Bell as a service engineering manager and a 14 month training program at Sikorsky with a preponderance of that time on the production floor doing everything from shooting rivets to building blades. I asked the chief engineer about the differences in level of quality between the Agusta product and those of the original designers of the helicopters. His response was that the original designers concentrated on delivery schedule and manpower costs while Agusta did have to concentrate on delivery schedules they did not at that time have to worry about manpower costs because of the nature of the company and how it was an arm of the government. The only helicopter built in the USA that could compare to the level of quality construction of the fuselage was the Apache but Ryan, who has the highest level of metal work, constructed it. Hughes on the other hand was still building models of the 500 series using plaster tooling and at that time they had constructed well over 2000 models of that helicopter.
“Also, many helicopter manufacturers make many transmission parts for their transmissions, unlike Mr. Zuckerman's incorrect assertion. Most manufacturers do the final machining, assembly and testing. No manufacturer makes all the parts of their transmissions. All buy bearings, gearbox case castings and the large gear castings from other aerospace manufacturers. No helicopter manufacturer has the facilities, experience or volume to make gearbox castings, for example.
I did not wish to imply that Agusta made ball and roller bearings but I did imply that they made castings of every transmission on every helicopter they built and they cut every gear for those transmissions. They also make the rotorheads and other components of the dynamic and drive line systems. They have their own casting plant in central Italy that does all of the gear box casting work. They also do the dynamic run in of every transmission they build. Things may have changed at Sikorsky since my time but when I was there they had all of their rotorheads made by a machining company in Connecticut and they came in as a kit and were assembled by Sikorsky. They also purchased their transmissions from Indiana gear Works and they were also shipped in as a kit. The reason I can say this is that I constructed transmission, and rotorheads as well as clutches for the S-55, the S-58 and the H-37. As I previously indicated, it was my understanding that the US Navy purchases components for the dynamic and drivelines for their SH3-Ds from Agusta. Also when I worked for Bell I was told that they did their own casting of transmission elements and they cut their own gears but the did purchase the bearings.
[ 26 December 2001: Message edited by: Lu Zuckerman ]</p>