There is no "H" in "Worcester."
And it's odd to see one there, since, from the pronunciation, you'd expect it to be spelled "Wooster".
How to build a 50k ton forging press
51–60 of 196 posts
Re: How to build a 50k ton forging press
#52These massive presses are/were of strategic importance. Something politicians, most of whom seem to be lawyers these days, completely fail to grasp. I am not in general a fan of government subsidy, but I was very disappointed when the government of the UK declined to fund a large press in Sheffield, which would have been used to build the next generation of nuclear reactors. June 2010 timeframe. Luckily natural gas is cheap and has no geopolitical supply chain problems eh?
Re: How to build a 50k ton forging press
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
well the next time I need some 130ft thick brackets I'll ask them whether I can use it after hours or on the weekend EDIT: or, according to hwillis' math, 2.5ft thick. I guess those could be useful for anchoring a zipline to the moon or something.
I saw a guy weld 1.5 or 2 inch plate once to repair the bucket on a giant bulldozer. That was… interesting. I was trying to figure out why he left such a big gap until he started welding. He had to fit the head in to lay down layer after layer of welding bead to join the pieces at full depth. How would you weld even one foot of steel?
For a butt joint V it out on both sides and do many, many passes. Maybe have a few guys with rosebud torches working heat into it as you go. Big rods make it go faster (https://youtu.be/j61ezBX-EyA). For a lap joint it's the same idea, you're going for a great big fillet. But if you have a gigantic press at your disposal there are other options. For inspiration: https://youtu.be/k_LA_R4ifYk
The idea behind forge welding is you get both parts nearly molten (e.g. "welding heat") then your hammer blow (or the pressure from a huge press) puts enough energy into the weld area to briefly melt it.
Also, hot rivets might be a better option than welding if you can get away with it.
Re: How to build a 50k ton forging press
#54What strikes me is how great of an investment this turned out to be. Does the US invest in manufacturing like this anymore? Tangentially, if there were a war today would the US be able to produce as much as it did in WW2?
> Does the US invest in manufacturing like this anymore?
It might be easy to argue over the exact degree of similiarity, but I'd argue that the US has repeatedly made manufacturing investments since the 1950s. Buried in bills signed into law, you'll find such investments.
Recent examples include the Recovery Act of 2009 or the American CHIPS act of 2022.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinvest...
Re: How to build a 50k ton forging press
#55> Forgings have the added advantage of variable grain direction which generally can be tailored to the stress patterns of a specific design. This is a super underappreciated fact! It's often repeated that forging is just stronger, but just squishing steel does NOT make it stronger. Forging a part is so much more than just smashing it into a shape. Steel cable is made of pretty ordinary steel which is stretched 100s o…
This effect also applies to polymers! Perhaps even more so. Take a polyethylene bag (LDPE) and stretch the material in one direction. You might notice the material becomes thinner but also stronger. This is due to the polymer chains becoming aligned. Eventually you get "drawn fibers" where the molecular strands are aligned with the fibers for optimum tensile strength.
That makes sense, if I don't rip open a bag on the first try it'll just stretch and never open
Re: How to build a 50k ton forging press
#56What strikes me is how great of an investment this turned out to be. Does the US invest in manufacturing like this anymore? Tangentially, if there were a war today would the US be able to produce as much as it did in WW2?
In terms of raw output, the answer is likely no.
However, this might not matter as much now as it did in the past due to nuclear weapons being the primary deterrent in war these days, and the fact that our standing fleet of aircraft, aircraft carriers, nuke subs, tanks, etc... is essentially second to none. Additionally what we do have is highly capable and extremely specialized, in my opinion, leading to not really needing as many (quality over quantity). Take for example, an F35, which doesn't really have an equal in the skies, we have over 630 of them, with the goal of having around 2500. China only has 300 J-20s which are basically a copy of the older F22. Russia only has 22 non-test Su-57s. Would we have a realistic need to build 1000 of them within a year?
Due to many factors, but primarily free trade and globalization, it's unlikely that we ever see that non-automated manufacturing capacity return, though if needed we could probably mobilize the economy via the defense act to force more manufacturing capacity, though it's hard to imagine we would currently need to.
Re: How to build a 50k ton forging press
#57Was reading this NYT op ed - https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/19/opinion/chris-murphy-demo... - and reflecting that the people talking don’t get that the secret sauce for meaningful labor is not just that it pays, but also the sense that it is “special” somehow, in the sense that manufacturing parts with 50000 ton press is manual labor but also remarkable because of the uniqueness of the machine being used.
Most discussions about trying to build industrial capacity in the US seem to focus on either our high labor costs or on the disinterest in capital to invest in low margin places. I would love to understand what time frame of guaranteed business the government provided these companies to convince them to participate, and also what other industrial processes the government invested in which failed to take off. Specifically, why didn’t this sort of thing work for the solar industry a few years back?
Re: How to build a 50k ton forging press
#58Progress continues. The biggest press in the world today was built in 2018, is rated for 60,000 tons, and is in Los Angeles County, California.[1][2]
[1] https://www.lightmetalage.com/news/industry-news/forging/web...
Re: How to build a 50k ton forging press
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unskilled feels unfair, it requires a fair bit of skill, and you're also learning how to forge while doing it.
This has been such a frustrating culture war definitional argument.
Not necessarily a culture war thing. People who aren't familiar with the subject might take "unskilled" in the plain-english sense, as a pejorative. And who can blame them? We're english speakers before we're technical speakers.
Make gracious assumptions.
Re: How to build a 50k ton forging press
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Was curious about what welding technique you meant, looks like it is local electron beam welding https://www.thefabricator.com/thewelder/blog/assembly/sheffi...
I work in an EB shop doing everything from welding, engineering assistance, machine repairs, and complete machine rebuilds. It's quite an impressive process and Ive had parts in my hands that come from some of the biggest names you can think of in aerospace, semiconductor, military, medical and more.
50 kW ebeam?