I have obtained the opinions of several Teutonic manufacturing engineers
regarding the printing on the Amphi radiator plate. Here's the distillation of
their comments:
1. The "4" and "63" are quite likely to be the month and year of manufacture.
2. The "Werk Nr."means literally Factory Number. This could be the vendor's part
number. A Werk is literally "a piece of work", and even artists producing a
limited edition of some piece of art will call each a Werk. The "16602" is most
likely just the vendor's part number. The individual numbers may code to some
descriptor such as dimensions, materials, number of tube, liters capacity,
whatever.
3. However, in the German aircraft industry, the "16602" could be a plant ID +
part ID number. That is, it could mean vendor plant # 16, production part #602.
Here's a link to production figure for the DO-335 aircraft, with Werk meaning
something like the USAF "tail number".
http://www.aeroflight.co.uk/profile/d335prod.htm
4. The "Lfd. Nr." is "laufende nummer" and literally means "running number".
This is used to identify all of the parts made during a certain period of time
(a shift, a day, a week, a moth, a year, or a production run). 413 in a shift,
day, or week sounds like too high a production rate. So the 413 likely means the
413th part made during a month or year or during the entire production run.
Since the Amphi uses a unique radiator, yet was making cars at a very low rate,
IWK likely made several buys, maybe one a year. Making only 750 custom radiators
per year is not a good idea for the vendor, and buying 5000 radiators in 1960
was also not a good idea for IWK. So again, this is likely serial number 413 in
some period of time, likely the production lot contracted for 4 1963.
5. Hans Windorf A.G. does not seem to have survived.
Again, we have a system which is precise, but not universally obvious. And,
since the plates went on at the vendor, IWK might have had a pile of a hundred
or so radiators at any one time. And there was no reason to practice FIFO; just
grab the five you need for this morning and haul them to the line.
Regards,
Ed
El Cajon
67 (sort of) Rust Guppy
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Linear Mode
