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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.
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
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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.
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 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.
A bit of history provides some useful background. During WWII, the area near Pittsburgh PA produced more steel than the rest of the world combined. (But those mills were mostly built with 19th century technology. They were at the 'prime of life' and would have been obsolete soon even without the war.) Steel mills and other heavy industry throughout the rest of the world also were largely destroyed by bombing from one side or the other - mostly Allied bombing of German and Japanese steel mills. So after the war US industry, and particularly US steel, were the only ones still able to produce products. We then lent money to all parties (the Marshall Plan), with the proviso that they had to spend the money on US goods. The boom of the 1950s was the result of this and some other policies (the GI bill was another). This amounted to a postwar bubble.
One of the things that those other countries did was build new steel plants, using the latest technology. By the end of the 1950s these new plants were coming online, able to make steel for much lower prices. At that point the US steel industry, still based on late-19th century mill technology, became completely obsolete. The US steel companies, still competing with each other as well as the rest of the world, could not justify spending $zillions to essentially compete against themselves, while it was well worth while for other countries to develop their own industries, as they were starting from a zero base. This is a classic problem that results in constant turnover in many/most/all industries - it rarely seems like a good idea to build your own competition looking at the short term - all it does is spend money to reduce profits- but it's often a good idea to come in from outside and build the competition to the entrenched, inefficient market leader..
Since the 1970s there have been quite a few new, smaller mills built here using the latest (IIRC NUCOR was one of the first examples) but they still have to work hard to compete with the lower costs elsewhere - lower wages, lower land prices, etc. So it's an uphill battle, and that kind of dominance after WWII was a one-time deal.
One of the side-effects of the loss of those two-mile-long mills in the Pittsburgh area is that the side has become clean. When I lived there (early 1990s) the Carnegie Library and Museum was being scrubbed. The building had been black for 80 years or so. After scrubbing it turned out to be blond! I saw pictures from the 1950s where it was too dark and smoky to see across the street in downtown Pittsburgh. And those big mill areas along the rivers are now available to be turned into parks, housing, light industry, clean industry, whatever. But of course, there aren't many jobs. The population of Pittsburgh now is about 1/3 what it was in 1965. Houses are (or at least were) cheap.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
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.
Then you know nothing about aviation manufacturers - a modern Airbus aircraft can be over 50% American by weight if chosen with GE or P&W engines, and 40% with RR engines. Airbus has major US suppliers.
The summary is a summary of the article on BoingBoing, here:
http://boingboing.net/2012/02/13/machines.html
which mentions all of those things. (Specifically, the company that built the press went bankrupt some decades ago and the machines used to cast the parts of that size have been sold for scrap). The link is to a similar article in The Atlantic, for whatever reason.