Thomas West Foiundry
Aluminum foundry





    The pictures on this page were saved by Draper employee Bob Anderson
    of Upton. Bob was one of the last workers at the plant before it closed in
    1980. He saw that the Rockwell people in charge at that time were throwing
    out many old Draper items including a huge number of photos. He rescued
    many of them and passed them on me  I'm going to scan them and put
    them on this site, doing about 15 per page. Thanks to Bob for saving them
    and to Tom Bair of the Upton History Museum for putting me in touch with
    Bob. The captions are from Bob's comments on the pictures.

          
                  Page 2            Bob Anderson's Draper Years   

                      
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Draper Corporation - Hopedale, Massachusetts

Page 1

    In the center here are holding furnaces for the melted iron. On the left of the one in the
    foreground is a "bull." Metal is poured into it to be taken to where it will go into the molds.

    Charge bucket, used to pour materials
    to be melted into the furnace.

Another view of the West Foundry.

    Pouring aluminum into a mold. Items at the lower
    right are "sword feet" for fly shuttle looms.

    These workers are putting "cores" into a mold. They are used where holes or
    slots are required in the casting. The part being cast appears to be a loom side.

Pouring into a mold.

    After the castings cool and harden, they go through a process where steel shot
    is blasted at them to clean the sand off of them. They hang on hooks as they go
    through, and come out as clean, rough castings. The castings on the left were
    made for Diehl. They made the motors for the looms. Drapers made the castings
    for the motors and sent them to Diehl. They'd come back as finished motors. The
    items at the lower right appear to be the bases the motors would sit on.

    Computer controlled machine. The industrial engineering department
    would make up tapes that would tell the machine what to do.

    John Hogarth, who appears to be looking
    at a spectrograph in the foundry.

    Pattern makers working on a pattern for a
    tape motion bracket for the shuttleless loom.

Worker is making a loom harness cam.