An 8,000 Ton Giant Made the Jet Age Possible

Hugh Pickens writes "Tim Heffernan writes that when 'The Fifty,' as it's known in company circles, broke down three years ago, there was talk of retiring it for good. Instead, Alcoa decided to overhaul their 50,000-ton, 6-story high forging press, now scheduled to resume service early this year. 'What sets the Fifty apart is its extraordinary scale,' writes Heffernan. 'Its 14 major structural components, cast in ductile iron, weigh as much as 250 tons each; those yard-thick steel bolts are also 78 feet long; all told, the machine weighs 16 million pounds, and when activated its eight main hydraulic cylinders deliver up to 50,000 tons of compressive force.' The Fifty could bench-press the battleship Iowa, with 860 tons to spare, but it's the Fifty's amazing precision — its tolerances are measured in thousandths of an inch—that gives it such far-reaching utility. Every manned US military aircraft now flying uses parts forged by the Fifty, as does every commercial aircraft made by Airbus and Boeing making the Jet Age possible. 'On a plane, a pound of weight saved is a pound of thrust gained—or a pound of lift, or a pound of cargo,' writes Heffernan. 'Without the ultra-strong, ultra-light components that only forging can produce, they'd all be pushing much smaller envelopes.' The now-forgotten Heavy Press Program (PDF), inaugurated in 1950 and completed in 1957, resulted in four presses (including the Fifty) and six extruders — giant toothpaste tubes squeezing out long, complex metal structures such as wing ribs and missile bodies. 'Today, America lacks the ability to make anything like the Heavy Press Program machines,' concludes Heffernan, adding that 'The Fifty' will be supplying bulkheads through 2034 for the Joint Strike Fighter. 'Big machines are the product of big visions, and they make big visions real. How about a Heavy Fusion Program?'"

Comments

now technology

[Anonymous Coward]

We see various technologies come and go, one hit wonders, ephemeral vapourware and promises of the next big thing.

When I read this, it made the engineer in me happy to think some things last longer.

Re:now technology

[tlhIngan]

I've always loved the older technologies for their ability to just keep going. In fact, just a few days ago, I finished cleaning up an old 1950's Remington typewriter. It hasn't been touched in decades in my parents' damp, cold basement, was covered with more dust and grime than I thought was physically possible, but a lot of hours of cleaning later, and every key still works absolutely perfectly. Found a place online that still sells ribbons, so I've got it typing again. And odds are, unless it's dropped from something high up (and it even has a good chance of surviving that, since it's over 30 pounds of stainless steel), it'll probably last well until after I'm gone.

The new technology may be awesome for what it can do, but the old technology is awesome for what it can survive and keep going through.

Well, the old technology is like that because it's overdesigned to be like that. It survives because all the parts are stronger than they need to be (material science being what it was then, and quality variance between batches was probably a lot higher) because they had to - unlike modern manufacturing processes where we can get remarkably consistent raw materials due to smeltters carefully controlling the alloys. When your inputs are of varying quality, you compensate by overdesigning. And yes, it happens today in the semiconductor industry - it's remarkably hard to produce a consistent product so transistors and such are overdesigned to compensate (we can spec chips to run slower, we avoid use of passive components (it's difficult to get resistors/capacitors to come out with less than a 20% tolerance in silicon - there are many "equivalent" circuits done using transistors which are easier to match), etc.

Plus, we also have survivor bias - the "old stuff" survives because we threw out the crap that failed long ago. Heck, your typewriter may be a victim of that - it's just you got one of the few good ones. When things were cranked out by the thousands, it happens.

Additive manufacturing?

[Karmashock]

This thing is neat and maybe that's the best way to do things. But I thought Boeing was talking about additive manufacturing. I know they have ways of making titanium parts using additive manufacturing. I don't know if they're as strong as forged parts. But once that's cracked this forging process should become obsolete in aerospace. After all, why use solid pieces when you can have pieces articulated down to the level of bone. Fine latices of metal interwoven to build parts that have strength to weight ratios similar to what we see in nature. Sure, metal is stronger then bone. But bone is made out of relatively weak materials. If you build something with the same structure out of metal you could get something very strong and very light.

Still, very neat machine. I wonder if the Chinese have such a thing and it sounded like the Germans might?

It would be interesting to know if these machines are critical to a heavy industry economy.

Re:The future will be printed, not forged.

[hackertourist]

While in many applications it may be possible to replace metal with composites, there are always going to be corner cases. It wouldn't be too big a deal to lose one of these 50-kt machines, but losing the capability worldwide is another matter.

I'm reminded of a story a while back about there being only one company worldwide that can cast nuclear reactor vessels.