America's Iron Giants - The World's Most Powerful Metalworkers

in the early 1950s the world was at the dawn of the Cold War but there was a secret technology that Germans had been using to build their airplanes during World War two making them lighter faster not to mention quicker and cheaper to build and now after the war the Soviets took the best parts of the German technology back to Russia giving them an edge over the u.s. the u.s. realizing him is now behind and kicked off a program to catch up and this program would become an engineering and manufacturing triumph building the world's largest iron Giants these huge machines have made in calculations to global society commerce space travel national security in your life - during World War two when the Allies examined shot down during planes they noticed something disturbing the planes contain parts which were far more advanced than anything the Allies had these parts were huge forgings basically large pieces of metal which had been squeezed under tremendous pressure and a press sort of like a gigantic waffle iron these large forgings were stronger lighter and took far far less time to produce than the methods the Allies were using which partially explained how the Germans were making so many planes which performed so well the Germans could quickly stamp out these huge complex forgings but the US would have to make many parts consuming hundreds of hours of personnel and machining time and they still would not be as lighter stiff after World War 2 America brought back three large German presses as war reparations a five thousand and two fifteen thousand ton presses but the Russians made off with the biggest and best one a thirty thousand ton press and the plans for a monster of over fifty thousand tons and that was a huge concern knowing there was a gap in the early 1950s just as the Cold War was starting to ramp up the u.s. kicked off what is known as the heavy press program this funded an effort to build several very large closed Dyan extrusion presses in the US but also to make sure we have the biggest presses in the world but shortly after the program started the Korean War broke out in American industry was urgently put into action to make war materiel thus as to not delay the program needlessly parts were ordered from abroad and before too long the US had its first press built under the program though they were very much larger ones to come now why Germany had this technology is interesting as well and sort of the fault of the countries which defeated her in World War one the Treaty of Versailles forced Germany to give up much of its iron producing regions but was allowed to keep his large magnesium reserves if you strike iron like a blacksmith it bends if you try that with lightweight and strong but potentially brittle magnesium it'll crack you can't work it by hammering so Germany was forced to invent the forging technology that giant press has offered which turned to work out so beautifully with aluminium - and it was later perfect for war applications all of the presses that would be built under the heavy press program would come in two flavors one is the waffle iron kind called a closed I press this is where you have a die into which you put hot metal which is stamped into place the other is what is called an extrusion press you may have had something like one of these as a kid you place the shape you want in front of something you can squeeze and you get the shape you want the pieces that come out are often somewhat distorted from the final shape so they are heated again and stretched which makes them very straight with good dimensional accuracy this is not to say that powerful presses were unknown before the German ones were discovered in fact they've been around for over a hundred years but in much smaller forms and doing a different kind of job for smaller parts England's James nasmyth invented the steam hammer at 1839 which forged heavy iron with incredibly powerful blows and soon this kind of technology was used all throughout industry but this is what is meant by open-die forging and if the metal is bashed between two flat plates like in this remarkable footage from the Westinghouse Works circa 1900 this kind of press in parts no particular form on the metal and in the end the shape is up to the skill of the team working it working metal like this has the advantage of changing the internal grain structure to give a much stronger result than say casting or even a machined part it can also be much faster and produce much less waste at the cost of having to have a huge capital expense to build the forge furnaces and all the other supporting equipment in building the huge die presses a gigantic foundation needed to be poured for them you only see about half of the actual height of the press above ground the rest is all foundation which has to sit directly on bedrock most of the 10 presses built by the heavy press program survived and are still working today the two biggest ones both 50,000 tonnes are still pressing parts even though they were first put into service in the mid-1950s one of the 250 thousand ton presses was built by Nesta and installed in Cleveland mesta was an American company which today is not well known but is an important part of our ultra heavy industry story started in late 1800s it went on to build giant machines for factories all over the world including over 500 steel mills worldwide during World War two it made the giant 16-inch guns you've seen on battleships some of the largest machines ever built in America were made by Nesta and the 50 as the 50,000 ton press is known is one of them Mester was a company used to making huge machines but the 50,000 ton press was so big mesta had to make special machine tools just to machine some of the huge parts there also had to be custom train cars now they're specialized equipment for the massive castings first operational 1955 the mists of 50 has an amazing pedigree it has forged parts for spaceships that put humans on the moon the space shuttle missiles helicopters tanks and gas turbine every manned US military aircraft had parts fortunate essentially these huge presses made much of the advanced Cold War military machinery possible and had been a key component of national security there's no way we'd have such advanced aircraft with amazing capabilities without these presses when you think of the Cold War you think of fighter and bomber Jets nuclear missiles spaceships just take a moment to realize that all of those were made in part on these giant machines but it doesn't stop with military applications if you've ever flown on a commercial airplane made by Boeing or Airbus you have directly encountered the magic of Mestas 50 possibly just inches from where you were sitting if you've ever watched the wings gently bounce and wonder why they can flex but remain intact with such great sturdiness or wonder why the landing gear can take such crazy forces on landing thank the great strength of the forgings from the best of 50 but also think of all the secondary effects of having airplanes which are cheaper and faster think of all the global commerce which happens via aircraft the entire world moves at a faster pace and more cheaply thanks to the amazing aircraft made possible by these large presses moving packages equipment and people all around the world you come and contact every day with objects which are in some way touched by these commercial aircraft let's not forget these giant presses just don't do everything on their own in fact the entire process takes a huge set of machines and highly-trained people as part of the process each press needs a plant of about six city blocks in size to fully support the entire chain of operations first the ingots have to be heated throughout the entire process they may be heated several times as a part may be pressed more than once each time at a die which gets closer to the final shape as did not impart too much stress at once before the part itself is pressed tremendous pressures have to be built up by pumps and accumulators which generate pressures eventually about 4,500 psi in the case of the closed I press once the ingot is hot enough it's put into place and finally the incredible force of the press is put into motion despite the gigantic forces involved the operator has surprisingly fine control over exactly how much force is applied once out of the press the parts are inspected it may be heated again and later put into a slightly different diet to refine its shape even more eventually they are machined that this process is designed to radically reduced the amount of post pressing machining needed but it's important to also think beyond the machines themselves to the entire chain between design and final product designs for products had to change because of the availability of these presses engineers could now make parts they'd only dreamed of before and had to rethink how to approach problems appropriate metal alloys had to be created and a process for certification and new material science was born around the fantastic pressures involved once a part was made because they would often go into extreme environments new ways of certifying that a part were okay were developed like advanced ways for looking for cracks or internal voids I love how you can see these machines tracing a simple wooden form to control a giant milling machine to bring the part in the final tolerance to be able to withstand such incredibly high forces it is necessary that the dies that is to say the pieces of metal which come together to determine the shape had to be carefully made of very hard materials some of the earliest NC or numerical control machines were used to make these dies today we use computer numerical control machines or CNC to make parts like these but in these very early days the controls were far more simple had no computer involved but instead we're fed instructions from tape or even punched paper I don't usually like to throw a lot of numbers and viewers but here it's justified because of all the presses in the heavy press program the messed of 50 and its sister are just staggering now just talking about the messed of 50 some of the individual castings are over 350 tons the entire moving crosshead part is eight castings at eleven hundred and fifty tons the eight single piece steel columns which support the structure are almost 80 feet long 40 inches wide and come in at about 270 tons each four sections of each column are threaded with giant nuts on them all are 52 inches across and can weigh up to 55 tons for just the nut very large 1,500 horsepower motors pressurized huge forged accumulator bottles to a pressure of 4,500 psi which feed eight huge Pistons each of them 60 inches in diameter at the top of the press for a total of 50,000 tons or a hundred million pounds of pressure to give you an idea that kind of pressure if you placed a metal ingot on the entire die size 12 by 26 feet it would take 612 vertical feet of solid steel about the same size as a forty seven story building to make that fifty thousand tons of pressure but here's what really blows my mind all of the engineering that went into these presses was done with slide rules and engineers guessing how these never-before-seen forces would work the sciences of fracture mechanics or finite element analysis didn't exist and again this was all figured out with pencils and manual mathematics and yet the mest of 50 continued to work beautifully for over 50 years but finally in 2008 stress cracks were found in the midst of 50 the foundations were cracked and was need of repair when you consider the tremendous forces involvement Presta did as well as it did for nearly 60 years it took several years and a hundred million dollars but in 2012 I'm happy to say was back up and stamping and supports about a thousand jobs in the Cleveland area both of America's 50,000 ton presses are so important in the early 1980s they were recognized as a national historic mechanical engineering landmark sadly due to the sensitive kind of work they do you just can't go and take a tour for a long time America had the world's largest presses but the massive 50s have since been passed by other countries France at 65,000 tons Russia 75,000 tons and as of a few years ago China has put into service a huge 80,000 ton press in Russian design does this mean the u.s. is at a disadvantage I'm not so sure I found a report prepared for the army on the use cases for building larger presses in the 80,000 - the mind-numbing 200,000 ton range and the conclusion was that there just wasn't simply the need the 250 thousand ton presses in the many 30,000 ton or smaller presses were enough for our needs the next time you're on an airplane take a moment to appreciate what these amazing iron giants have done for us thanks for watching I'll see you next time

Channel: Machine Thinking

Views: 1,651,376

Rating: 4.8999567 out of 5

Keywords: press, forging, forge, iron, giant, metal, metal working, lathe, milling machine, mill, precision, cold war, jet, history, mesta, 50000 tons, science, nuclear bomb, missile, blacksmith, blacksmithing

Id: hpgK51w6uhk

Length: 12min 48sec (768 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 27 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/anon_and_on]

Great content , thanks for posting

[u/Pour_Louis]

I had no idea how many parts that we all interact with were made in such a fashion.

Bascially, every huge machine has parts made on one of these relatively few presses.

[u/aeon_floss]

This channel started to appear on my YouTube feed a few days ago as well. It must have crossed a particular threshold for it to get recommended. It is an excellent channel.

I did some History & Philosophy of Science modules at uni many years ago, and this material really hits the spot.

[u/Agent_Smith_24]

Great video

[u/phasechanges]

Great video! I knew about the heavy press program, but learned some new things. This is a great video for this sub!

[u/photoengineer]

These machines are absolutely awe inspiring if you get a chance to ever see them up close. Spent some time around 29kt and 35kt presses and just wow. In particular the extrusion press which made seamless pipe, it would push the sections vertically so the glowing orange pipe spitting fire would rise up towards the ceiling.

[u/kv-2]

One of my co-workers used to work across the river from the MESTA works, and described some of the large pieces coming out of there. I know I had to over hall an up cut shear (the bottom blade moved rather than the top) and it was impressively built.

Cleveland, based on looking at what companies are where, has an amazing about of heavy industry. The fifty, Horsburg and Scott, two of the three (that I know of) very large slewing ring bearing makers, couple gear and sprocket companies, Fives NA (gas valves), two steel mills, etc.

[u/Breeder18]

Really interesting video, thanks!

[u/Alfachick]

Fantastic video! Amazing engineering!