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Electronics Manufacturing
in Australia
Australia has a long history in local electronics manufacturing, from garages to vast
factories employing hundreds of people. Many products were designed and built
here by brands including Astor, AWA, EMI, Pye, Philips, Malvern Star (they made
pushbikes too!), Hot Point, Whirlpool and many more.
Part 1 by Kevin Poulter
S
ome of the biggest brands like Pye,
Philips and AWA (through connections to Marconi) had the advantage of having links to European or
American radio manufacturers. So
many early radios sold under those
brands were imported or arrived as kits
for assembly here. Soon, that evolved
into local design and production.
This first part of the series will cover
manufacturing by Pye Telecommunications Ltd, where I had considerable experience. Part two will cover
radio and TV manufacturers including
AWA, Astor and EMI/HMV.
Pye’s UK heritage
Pye was founded by W G Pye in
Cambridge, England as a supplier of
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scientific instruments to Cambridge
University. In 1925, he hired Charles
Orr Stanley to lead their domestic
radio production.
Pye initially struggled in this sector, as they were arguably the best
in their field and met the stringent
rules to avoid signal radiation. That
resulted in high selling prices and
poor sensitivity, both disasters in the
open consumer market. Pye noted that
other brands made cheaper, better-
performing radios due to less strict
compliance with emissions rules, so
they took that path.
Soon, Pye was a popular brand and
its radios could receive a host of stations, even those in mainland Europe.
Australian Pye domestic receiver
and commercial telecommunications production started in 1949 at
Abbotsford, Victoria, near Melbourne.
Imports from the UK supplemented
those sets. Despite local competitors,
the Telecommunications division was
very successful and Pye built a huge
Captions; top left: manufacturing Base Stations like the F60 in the 1960s.
Top right: the assembly line for UHF transceivers. The line on the far right is
winding coils.
Bottom two: the crystal clean room, for assembling frequency control crystals,
around 1970.
Australia's electronics magazine
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purpose-built Telecommunications
plant in Clarinda, near Clayton, in
Melbourne’s southeast.
It was vast, capable of accommodating about 200 staff. The managers included some from the UK, who
brought over their extensive production experience. The Australian
demand for two-way radios was vital
to the success of this factory, as mobile
phones were just a “Dick Tracy” fantasy at that time.
Locally-made parts
Each Australian manufacturer
that made products independently
of overseas (sometimes parent) companies decided how much would be
made in-house. AWA and Philips
made nearly every component locally,
including valves and transistor components, while Pye’s model was to buy
those parts, including Rola speakers.
Regardless, Pye Telecommunications made nearly every part of their
transceivers, including all the metalwork, stamping out chassis, coils,
wafer switches, screen-printing/etching printed circuit boards, tag strips,
some transformers, relays, cavity resonators and quartz crystals. The massive metal stamping equipment in the
open-plan building ensured the factory was not silent!
The military demanded high-
quality parts and tropical jungle-safe
techniques like encapsulating parts
and assemblies (sealing them with a
varnish-like coating). There, I learned
how to gold-plate copper on circuit
boards, which looked just like a basic
science experiment.
The military sent inspectors to
check items during production and
witness testing procedures, which
were more involved than those of any
civilian customer. Much of the factory was abuzz before the inspectors
arrived, taking special care to select
above-average products and ensure
that all areas were neat and tidy.
The Special Projects room developed, built and/or adapted products
outside the normal Pye product range
so that large contracts could be supplied.
A Pye Overland F10 type FM706 D/V/12 on top of a PS728 power
supply. The mains unit (pictured) and a Tulip (Lily) microphone enabled
a mobile two-way to be a compact base station. This was one of the power
supplies that blew up upon testing. Circa 1970s.
The all-valve Pye PTC 116 Reporter,
in radio-telephone mode, from
the 1959 range made at Pye
Abbotsford, Vic. It was
used in Australian taxis,
fire engines, ambulances,
for ship-to-shore
communications and many
other applications.
The big Philips takeover
Pye Tulip microphones
were iconic accessories
for decades. There were
two main components: an
electromagnetic dynamic
microphone and a push-totalk microswitch.
In 1967, Philips took over Pye
worldwide, although it was not until
1970 that Philips and Pye Telecommunications merged manufacturing. Most
of the facts in this article apply equally
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Australia's electronics magazine
August 2024 39
A UHF Transceiver developed by Pye for the Department of Civil Aviation,
seen here in September 1964. It was fitted in a 19-inch rack and similar
units were supplied to the RAAF. Cavity resonators are visible; they were
used to peak the tuning.
to Philips’ situation after the takeover.
Pye Clayton staff were relieved to find
that nearly all their staff remained;
only a few Philips staff merged into
key positions.
The Philips Telecommunications
Manufacturing Company Limited
(Philips-TMC for short), Radio Communication Division, head office and
factory were at Clarinda Road, Clayton
in Melbourne.
Philips-TMC combined the experience and technical know-how of the
global Philips and Pye companies to
create the largest and most experienced manufacturer of two-way radio
equipment in Australia.
They marketed two-way radios
throughout Australia and 40 other
countries. The company maintained
Australia’s largest, best-equipped
after-sales service organisation, with
branches in all mainland capital cities and 97 authorised distributors
nationwide.
Philips-TMC was represented in
Fiji, the Philippines, Hong Kong,
Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, Papua
New Guinea, Thailand and Indonesia, among other countries. Two-way
radios were also assembled in Indonesia for local supply.
Pye products were still available
for a while, with many being simply
re-branded Philips designs. Eventually, the Philips 1680 became the main
mobile two-way radio product. At the
production level, very few changes
were noted, other than a visit by the
director of Philips.
If a client wanted a limited number of transceivers that were outside
the standard product range, two-way
radios like the Pye Cambridge were
imported from the UK. Many mobiles
and rack-mounted equipment were
exported to Pacific islands and Asian
countries. In a surprising turn of
events, Philips Melbourne received a
large order for Australian model 1680
mobiles from the Dutch Police!
Manufacturing structure
Pye played a leading role at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, providing twoway radios, loudhailers, television cameras and domestic TVs used as monitors.
This technical room was used to monitor and service all their equipment.
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Australia's electronics magazine
Factory sections included Assembly, Accounting, Testing, Metal Fabrication, Special Projects, Parts Store,
Printed Circuit boards, Coils, Design,
Sales, Purchasing, Promotion, Crystal
Production, Order Processing, Canteen, Export and Despatch.
Challenges abound when competitors exist, so Pye had local and export
Sales Teams. Customers included a
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host of Australian companies, especially those with fleets of vans for, say,
TV repairs, CFA (Country Fire Authority), city fire brigades, government,
military, taxis, police, DCA (Department of Civil Aviation), the Flying
Doctors and much more.
A highlight from the early days was
the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, with
Pye supplying ship-to-shore communications from the Royal Yacht Britannia to the Royal vehicles for the Duke
of Edinburgh, and televisions to monitor the games.
A large quartz crystal plant was built
next to the Pye plant, arguably the best
in Australia. Natural Brazilian quartz
was imported and X-rayed for the best
cutting angle. Calculations were sent
by landline overnight to the Monash
University large computer. Those calculations could be done now in seconds on a laptop, but it was the best
procedure available at the time.
When the Pye technician arrived in
the morning, he hoped there had not
been any glitch in the transmission,
or it was back to square one, redoing
it the following night.
Pye experimented with new techniques for quicker and more reliable
production of products such as crystals.
During the normal process, a finished crystal wafer was gold-plated
and mounted on two delicate wire
connectors. The base and top cover
were then soldered together and evacuated during the final sealing. Since
soldering creates high temperatures,
engineering thought: why not use
cold welding? It seemed like a winwin: fewer staff would be required,
and there would be little heat in the
process.
Initially, there were many failures
in getting the correct settings without
contamination. However, they made
it work in the end.
Another bright idea occurred for
optimising the production of twoway radios. The plan was to push all
the parts onto the main circuit board,
bend the component tails for more
grip on the copper tracks, then cut
off the excess leads. Next, a conveyor
belt took the completed board into a
molten solder bath, with a speed control to adjust the time the parts were
exposed to the solder.
It was soon discovered that running
the conveyor too quickly resulted in
many dry joints while running it too
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A Pye microphone and earphone in a handset for a telephone-like experience.
They were re-branded as Philips by this time in the 1970s.
The Pye Victor, one of the last
valve-based two-way radios made in Australia. All
products are from Kevin Poulter’s collection and were photographed by him
using a Nikon P900 and in-camera flash.
Manufacturing and testing Pye Overland two-way radios. The test gear seen here,
like the Marconi signal generator and AVO meter, will be known to many readers.
Australia's electronics magazine
August 2024 41
Top: Ian Hyde (in white overalls)
arriving at the docks to service Pye
gear in a Navy ship.
Left: Marlene checking the cut angle
of a quartz wafer using diffraction
X-ray equipment, c1970.
Bottom: servicing a Pye mobile
PTC116 mobile telephone in a Navy
ship in the 1950s.
42
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Australia's electronics magazine
slowly resulted in ‘cooked’ components. It is now a standard soldering
technique used for many products that
still use through-hole components,
called “wave soldering”.
It could be said that, next to sales
and design, the company’s backbone
was the mums who sat on the production line, each assembling just a small
portion of the mobile radio. Provided
the supervisor was not watching, they
chatted about family matters as they
added their quota of parts to the radio.
Usually, this worked very well.
One of the items assembled on the
line was a rugged 12V power supply
that enabled a mobile radio to operate on mains and thus become a small
base station. The lady on assembly
soldered the massive filter capacitors in place, then the finished unit
went to test.
With considerable confidence, the
test technician flicked the on switch,
and there was instantaneously an
unearthly “BANG”, not unlike a shotgun, and the factory filled with smoke.
The lady had wired the part in with
reversed polarity! I recently met the
test technician, who was rather rattled by the explosion but uninjured.
Parts anyone?
One of the biggest challenges was
to make a list of parts for a new product so that they could be made or
ordered with enough time to supply
the production process. Halting the
assembly line to wait for parts was
a ‘must avoid at all costs’ situation.
Some parts needed multiple steps, like
metal stamping and cadmium plating
(passivation), painting, captive nuts
machined in place, or parts like feedthroughs.
The latter was a plated nail surrounded by an insulator. When
pressed into a small hole in the chassis, the feedthrough enabled a wire to
be soldered on the top and bottom of
the nail, thus enabling voltage to be
transferred from the top of the chassis
to underneath.
Parts were ordered with around 10%
excess to cover failures, damage and
shortfalls. Potential losses occurred
when parts were dropped to the floor
by assembly ladies or staff who used
components to make their own projects (‘foreign orders’).
Faced with considerable production delays when some parts ran out,
management asked the ladies to be
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careful not to drop parts like resistors. All parts in stock were housed
in a cyclone-caged store. Parts could
only be obtained internally with a requisition slip signed by a senior staff
member.
The order processing department
was the link between sales and production or, in the case of crystals,
between the client and production.
Products were ordered from the factory using a form with key data like
the customer name, the required delivery dates, model numbers, transmission frequencies and ordering codes.
A Philips FM320, made in the ex-Pye factory.
Competition
Competitors like AWA and Pye tolerated each other; for example, AWA
used Pye crystals. Some readers may
identify AWA, Marconi, and Eddystone test equipment in the photographs. Pye had no reservations about
using competitor’s test equipment.
AWA also made components branded
MSP (Manufacturer’s Special Products) so that competitors could use
them without having an AWA logo
on their gear.
The Golden Era ends
The two-way radio businesses
boomed as so many Australians
needed wireless communications.
Two-way radios in ambulances and
fire engines helped save lives. Thousands of Australians benefited,
through employment at the parent company or at the suppliers.
Like so many products, the
industry’s demise was due to politics,
the introduction of the mobile phone
and overseas competition.
Philips Two-way Radio in Australia
closed decades ago, with some staff
moving to Simoco. Today, a small
number of Australian speciality companies survive in the world electronics
market by making unique items, such
as modules for space vehicles and sensors for food production.
An internal view of the Philips FM320. The components and
construction techniques used would be familiar to many of our readers.
Conclusion & future articles
For more information on Pye Telecommunications Australia in the
1950s, please visit siliconchip.au/
link/abvb
The second article in this series
will cover other brands that manufactured electronics in Australia, especially televisions and radiograms. The
brands featured will include EMI/
HMV and AWA.
SC
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PYE Australia Quartz Crystal frequency control products, circa 1970. The plain
silver box is a TCXO (temperature compensated crystal oscillator). Top left is
the outside and inside of a crystal filter.
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August 2024 43
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