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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?'"
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.
Bigger is better
That's something completely fascinating that I never knew before! It's days like this that remind me what it was like to be young - when everything was new and exciting. Thanks, internet!
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
... a pound of weight saved is a pound of thrust gained."
Really? So if I throw two snakes out of the window, the engines will provide one pound more of thrust?
There are Airbus and Boeing planes built using parts made by the lower capacity presses used while this one was unserviceable or down for maintenance...
TFS includes almost the entire content of TFA. On the other hand, the provocative "lacks the ability", "big visions" and "heavy fusion" comments all seem to be figments of the submitter's imagination, as none appear in the article.
Modern planes, and other transport/engineering structures, are moving to composites. Which are layered, printed, sometimes pressure baked and squeezed into form. But no longer forged on this scale.
While these machines are awesome, I've wandered along a car body stamping line and watched plates go from a flat sheet to a car door in 100meters, they are becoming less necessary to us. They will still be needed, of course, for some jobs where only such a monster can help, but I think the US should look on these as potential future museum pieces, with nostalgia for a bygone age of megaengineering, rather than a source of future industrial dominance.
"Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
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.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
.. I wish America (and all other non-conformists) would get with the metric standard. Did anyone else sigh at the following statement?
According to WP, there are different "tons" out there. The terse "ton" or "tonne" should mean 1000kg everywhere. When used in terms of poundage, the appropriate terms are apparently "short ton" (US, 2000 lb) and "long ton" (UK, 2240 lb).
It makes it all the more annoying when people steeped in science and logic continue to pander to these archaic systems instead of phasing them out :S
that the US does not have the capability to make another such press. Or that the US lacks the ability to return to the moon. Or so many other things that the US used to do.
Now instead of Nasa working to get us further in space we have Nasa working on cooking the books to "hide the decline" so they can help push through laws which will make getting back to the moon even harder. Instead of Hollywood promoting the kind effort needed for such projects, you have Hollywood pushing the actors to pose naked to prevent killing animals that workers on such projects need to eat to keep their energy up.
Seems like we've lost our focus. I wonder of China or India will do so in fifty years time when they run things and we are the third world nation.
Amazing, but... what is it?
I find it's really depressing
rewriting history since 2109
I'm puzzled about the hate and outright hostility by people bagging this 'old' technology. It seems to be a product of silly, irrational thinking about what qualifies as 'high tech' and what isn't.
Irrational and silly. Especially from conservatives who really ought to know better. Their distain for 'old' technology is self-defeating, especially since these silly and ignorant people claim to be for 'strong defence', which, btw, requires equipment built from high-strength, high-performance lightweight parts.
If you knew even the FIRST thing about metallurgy, you would know why people are spending good money on building and maintaining this capability.
Conservative, rightwing 'truthiness' makes you look stupid, and is self-defeating.
That's why it can't be built in the US today.
But China will do it.
This is another score for the government and a blow to the idea that provate industry always does everything best.
Some things are simply too expensivre and farsighted for private industry to invest. That's why a decent sized government is needed, to invest massive sums of money in things like this giant press. It has paid back massively.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
"The Fifty will soon be supplying bulkheads for the Joint Strike Fighter"
I'm not a big fan of dumping more money into the military when our science budgets are so thin.
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The UK company is mentioned as being build up with cheap government loans, which is a half truth.
Yes, they are getting cheap loans, but only begrudgingly and only after the government had canceled a much larger loan, aimed at letting them produce "ultra large" forgings that few other places in the world can manage, mostly for the nuclear industry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheffield_Forgemasters#2010_expansion
But of course, we have to spend billions turning London into a bland commercial fortress for the Olympics. This is not that surprising; money that is meant to be spend on a national level has a nasty habit of being spent within a few miles of London.
But hey, I'm sure the Coalition know what they are doing. I'm sure putting missile launchers of peoples roofs and forbidding British beer brewers from selling stuff in many of the capitals pubs is a far more sensible economic investment than developing world class forging capabilities.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Just because your mom doesn't read Slashdot doesn't mean it's cool to disrespect her in public. Good day, sir!
Jason-Palmer.com
The whole American steel industry is shielded by the US gov't and tax barriers to protect it from competition. They're too old and not financially viable without investments the global and local competition have already made.
On November 11, 2003, the WTO came out against the steel tariffs, saying that they had not been imposed during a period of import surge — steel imports had actually dropped a bit during 2001 and 2002 — and that the tariffs therefore were a violation of America's WTO tariff-rate commitments.
The ruling authorized more than $2 billion in sanctions, the largest penalty ever imposed by the WTO against a member state, if the US did not quickly remove the tariffs. After receiving the verdict, Bush declared that he would preserve the tariffs.
In retaliation, the European Union threatened to counter with tariffs of its own on products ranging from Florida oranges to cars produced in Michigan, with each tariff calculated to likewise hurt the President in a key marginal state. Faced with the threat, the U.S. backed down and withdrew the tariffs on December 4.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_United_States_steel_tariff
To quote the CATO institute:
Erecting barriers to imports will only postpone needed consolidation of the U.S. steel industry. The industry has not been losing jobs because of unfair imports, but because of relentless technological changes brought by "mini-mills" that produce a ton of steel at a fraction of the man hours required by the larger integrated mills. During the last period when comprehensive quotas were in place, 1984 to 1992, the steel industry continued to lose nearly 10,000 jobs per year. Quotas will only slow the inevitable.
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/bush-turns-protectionist-steel-companies
Is it really true that Airbus uses products from this mill on a regular basis? I would think that would be highly unlikely with so many European partners involved.
The 400 yard long wrench needed to tighten the 10 foot wide bolts was lost when someone (I think we all know who...) used it and never put it back.
http://blog.caranddriver.com/is-this-the-engine-of-the-future-in-depth-with-matti-holtzberg-and-his-composite-engine-block/
This article goes into a little more depth. The block is actually a combination of aluminum and carbon. The parts that see the highest stress and highest temperature still have to be metal.
Also, this engine was announced a year ago, and I haven't been able to find any links to people actually driving one.
Once again we have government spending being instrumental to helping the capitalist free market. Add this to the internet and the highway system as government funded projects that are crucial to technological advancement.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
Have you noticed how this Hugh Pickens guy never ceases to post these long, well-written articles. :) Maybe some newspaper hires him, too.
America doesn't lack the ability, we lack the interest. Out apathy is strong, but I really just don't care.
In fact, the nodular cast iron of which many engine parts are made, is itself a composite. The iron (a metal) contains nodules of graphite (carbon) which are roughly spherical and give it a combination of strength and ductility. Although it isn't as strong as a steel forging, nodular cast iron is very versatile and can be cast easily. When I was involved in a British Government kickstarter project over 20 years ago, one of the key objectives for future manufacturing that was identified was a way of producing cast parts in strong materials economically to near finished size, i.e. to eliminate the need for forging.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Your perspecitve directly ignores the tremendous cost of environmental compliance on US steel production. Given that we want to llive in our planet, we triple the cost of coal and tacenite production by requiring environmental compliance, and similarly, the emissions controlls for steel mills mean that only mini-mills can possibly be compliant. These things were not considered in the WTO ruling. Besides blatantly dumping sub-costs steel on the market, China is still dumping billions of pounds of toxins into the environment.
Wouldn't it make more sense to put steel sleeves into this, and as you say, other metal parts into high-stress areas? Philosophical purity has little (but not no) place in the real world.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I think you mean "at the molecular or crystallographic level". Certainly where steels are concerned, the difference between forging and casting has a lot to do with grain structure as well as the pearlite/ferrite mix, and it is these that determine ductility, modulus, ultimate yield and so on. Chemistry has very little to do with it, a rudimentary knowledge nothing at all; irons of the same chemical composition can have very different properties indeed based entirely on the production processes applied to them. This is why welding by the uninstructed can be so dangerous: random heat treatment of steels (and aluminum alloys too) can have drastic effects on their behaviour.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Another undecipherable /. summary. What's the 8,000-ton thingy mentioned in the title? Nowhere to be seen in the summary. On the other hand the summary talks about this 50,000-ton thingy absent in the title...
Our ability to wage war depends a lot upon heavy industry. I wonder if we went into a situation like WWII if we could survive simply because our heavy industry has declined so greatly. The ability to move supplies by rail or the ability to crank out ships, cheaply and rapidly could make all the difference. We have fabulous weapons but are getting pretty sad in the ability for quick and massive deployments. This seems dangerous to me. There was a point at which we could not cast tank turrets and relied upon England to cast turrets for us in history. I wonder how many things we can not do today.
The author of this paper is obviously biased MPIF 2005 paper but it shows how active research is in this field, with the forging companies and powder metal companies constantly overtaking one another. The paper referenced actually demonstrates the superior fatigue strength of the powder technology used.
Forging involves the distortion of the metal grains, and as such there are always treatment issues with locked-in strain and the effects of any inclusions in the metal. Powder metallurgy has different problems. Neither is a perfect process. But the people who up-moderated drinkypoos comment certainly weren't metallurgists.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
TFA says:
What sort of defenses surround this Atlantean artifact?
Seastead this.
I always heard stories of Huey's flying into Alcoa and picking up parts... guess they weren't kidding.
If you think that's big, you should see the machine they built it on.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
HOLY CRAP that dude is STRONG !
bonus chart
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
the grapes are sour.
Learn to fable, idiot.
The fox claimed the grapes were probably sour because he couldn't reach them.
In contrast, we went there, ate the grapes, then decided it wasn't worth the effort to procure more of the same grapes.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Ah! One of my favourite irritations!
I do realise that a proportion of /. readers are Americans, and there have a higher probability of having been born with blinkers on (this, by the way, is known as mild sarcasm - non-Americans are likely to smile at this point); BUT honestly: "78 feet long" vs "yard-thick" and "250 tons each" vs "16 million pounds"? As far as I can see, this is just somebody getting horny* over big numbers and jerking off in public.
Just imagine the Chinese, Russians or Indians going on about the dimensions of things in their own, traditional units. And I bet they'd still be consistent and stick to the same, general system of units. Pounds and tons? What kind of tons or tonnes are we on about? Good grief, what has the world become, oh dear, oh dear.
*horny: aka "randy" in UK - most Brits feel Americans are a bit forthright, and I suspect it comes from eg. American guys declaring "Hi, I'm Randy" by way of introduction.
I was commenting on the GPs misleading use of terms. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of chemistry (see his post) would not be able to understand why tiny amounts of additives can have such large effects. Surface effects and the use of different atomic species as dislocation stoppers are neither basic chemistry nor much of a help to understanding why all of forging, casting and powder/composite metallurgy behave as they do.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I'm wondering how many of slashdotters can tell what the "8,000 ton" figure refers to?
One thing's for sure: We're all going to be a lot thinner.
Dear potential enemies: If you want to cripple the US aircraft manufacturing industry at the outset of WWIII, take out this forging press first. Sigh.
struggle to keep our 50+ year old machines running China has at least two 65k+ ton forging presses.
The Chinese have started building an 80,000 ton forge press
And now the USA has lost the capability to do what it once could do.
From TFA: 'Today, America lacks the ability to make anything like the Heavy Press Program machines,' concludes Heffernan
Of how we are just living off the production of an earlier age, just a bunch of cavemen foraging in the garbage.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Here is a great graphic of The-Fifty....
http://media.cleveland.com/business_impact/photo/14fgalcoajpg-907c9c9e5d681d08.jpg
I imagine, however, that it is all moot, because Ford isn't going to go with your gut feeling engineering.
As for paint- depends on function. Powder paint processes are nothing to do with powder metallurgy. Appropriate paint is all about substrate, environment and usage (like you cannot touch up powder paint or use it on abs, so it is no good for cars).
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
The heavy press is essentially an enormous metalworking machine, the theoretical background of which is well understood. The basic machine is primitive. What makes it significant is that it provides unique utility simply because of its scale.
What would be comparable in modern terms are gigantic, high-speed rapid prototyping machines with work envelopes exceeding 50 x 50 x 50 feet. Preferably selective laser-sintering, with the ability to build the entire mechanical structure of a jet without a single weld or rivet.
It wasn't repaired, it was replaced. It has 14 main heavy components. This article: http://aciers.free.fr/index.php/2010/10/01/siempelkamp-breaks-own-world-record-us/ Says the German company made the 14 main heavy components...
Google docs has an interesting 14 page manual for the beast, but slashdot thinks the url is too long...
Re-read the article, the metal parts are liners and he is replacing those with composites.
"Holtzberg plans on switching to a molybdenum plasma spray coating in place of aluminum cylinder liners to trim additional pounds."
Forging creates one type of MOLECULAR BONDING (AKA Chemistry!) or crystal structure than casting. Molecular bonds are a subject of chemistry. That a reduced expression of the chemical composition may be the same is of no relevance.
Benzene is C6H6 as are other compounds:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C6H6
So, big fat fucking NO, chemistry does not say a forged part and cast part are the same.
- a PhD chem. eng.
It's so damned refreshing so see the term "tolerances are measured in thousandths of an inch". AAARRRRGGGHHHHH!!!!
That typewriter would have seen less use in it's lifetime than some office typewriters in the 1950s would have seen in a couple of years. It's a tool designed for constant use for years. It's expected modes of failure would be wear related and not age related (indoors so not likely to corrode much) so it would last indefinitely in storage.
It's not overdesigned, instead it's designed for reliability with hard and repeated use. To use some analogies - it's server or telco class not a cheap desktop machine, or a Mercedes not a Datsun 120Y.
I see this being better used for making smaller and lighter electric motors than car engines.
electric motors can run cooler as well.
If you are an expert in a field that no longer exists you move on instead of just waiting for your job to appear again. If you can't make rocket parts then maybe you can machine whistles that imitate the mating calls of ducks and pay the bills that way.
The manufacturing base has moved on and we can't expected to be saved by a duck sex machiner.
It's going to take real work and a lot of resources committed by a lot of people instead of just expecting people to come back and work with gear that was scrapped long ago.
The powder metal parts are forged after sintering to get 100% density instead of leaving lots of little holes throughout. The cost saving is in having to do less forging or machining than other ways.
Forging strengthens by creating more disorder in the crystal structure at the atomic level (dislocations), and to break the material you have to overcome some of that first. It's the same as "work hardening" only that it's possible to do more of it hot without breaking the object.