Meeting at DMRL

There was a high level meeting in DMRL which was attended by all big bosses of ordnance factory board (OFB). The Director of DMRL and his associates made a detailed presentation of the development and the various tests conducted by them. Discussions went on and on. The questions asked by the OFB board members were answered patiently by DMRL staff even though many questions were flimsy in nature. Then it was my turn to present the experiments done and interpretations of the results obtained. I had already mentioned that OFB's were way behind in their standards for armour testing. Hence the method of testing adopted by us was challenged. I presented enough data and informed the committee that the testing procedures adopted by us was in line with the British armour testing specifications. This seems to have convinced them that we were on the right track. In addition to the CTS test we had welded one meter long plates and after conducting radiography we carried out conventional tests such as tensile test, bend test and charpy impact test at low temperature. All tests were in acceptable limits. One of the persons who was very sarcastic during the review suddenly told me that welding one meter does not prove that the steel is weldable as the armoured personnel carrier has hundreds of meters of weld. I retorted by saying that in my company we just weld a test coupon which is 450 mm long and if the test coupon passes all the tests based upon that procedure we weld thousands of meters. He did not like my answer because no body has ever talked to him like that. Later I learnt that he was one of the top people in the army. He was not accustomed to a civilian snubbing him. In spite of DMRL clearing all doubts OFB insisted that DMRL should weld a full scale hull of the APC, fit the engine and the transmission, carry all sorts of tests and if the tets are satisfactory then only army will agree for the Jackal steel to be used as a replacement steel for APC. DMRL requested BHPV to manufacture one hull with the drawings supplied by them. We did produce a hull which was fitted with the engine and transmission. This prototype APC went through all trials and was finally accepted by the army. During these trials not a single weld failed certifying that the technology developed by us met all the requirements of OFB.The welding technology supplied by us is even now used for welding indigenous armour plate developed by DMRL.
In the end we told DMRL we can weld armour steel!