STOP THE PRESSES
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| The Iron Giant 50,000 hydraulic press |
There is a machine that still uses 1940's technology to produce modern machines like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Sounds impossible? Not nearly as impossible as the incredibly massive nature of this machine: the giant Mesta 50,000 ton press, also know as the Iron Giant and rightly so.
The story of the giant press goes back to post WW1 Germany and the treaty of Versailles which essentially took away Germany's iron production facilities but allowed them to keep its magnesium mines and production methods. A little metallurgy here: iron can be hit into a shape, magnesium cracks when you hit it. Magnesium is not the ideal metal to work with when making strong metal shapes that require forging which is melting into a mold. But, having no other way to make the machines they needed, the Germans developed a forging process with magnesium that required it to be heated to a certain temperature and then hit with a giant force: enter the gigantic press. They would use this process to make their airplanes and war machines throughout WW2.
What does the press do you might ask? It stamps metal into complex shapes that give it extra strength and requires less time to make. This is huge. Light metals can be shaped into complex shapes and structures that would not have been thought possible before the German invention. Most American airplanes before this press had to be riveted together which was a long and labor intensive process and not nearly as strong.
The Iron Giant or the Fifty as it is also know, is still producing parts for very modern machines. It is a 50,000 ton press which means it can put that much force on a piece of metal. The actual weight of the machine is 16 million pounds. It can shape titanium, one of the hardest and lightest metals, into any shape by putting 100 million pounds of pressure on it, in seconds.
For production methods that involve speed, quality and strength this is a huge step forward. What took days now takes seconds to build. During WW2 it was Rosie the Riveter who put the giant air planes together piece by piece in a long and painstaking process and assembly line. When the U.S. started using the Mesta 50 in the early 1950s, mostly in response to the Soviets using captured German presses, it was a leap forward. Even though the giant press was a strategic development to further the U.S. against the Soviets, it is still being used today and will likely still be in use for decades. There is no substitute for its incredible blows. Vulcan's mythical hammer still lives.
The story of the giant press goes back to post WW1 Germany and the treaty of Versailles which essentially took away Germany's iron production facilities but allowed them to keep its magnesium mines and production methods. A little metallurgy here: iron can be hit into a shape, magnesium cracks when you hit it. Magnesium is not the ideal metal to work with when making strong metal shapes that require forging which is melting into a mold. But, having no other way to make the machines they needed, the Germans developed a forging process with magnesium that required it to be heated to a certain temperature and then hit with a giant force: enter the gigantic press. They would use this process to make their airplanes and war machines throughout WW2.
What does the press do you might ask? It stamps metal into complex shapes that give it extra strength and requires less time to make. This is huge. Light metals can be shaped into complex shapes and structures that would not have been thought possible before the German invention. Most American airplanes before this press had to be riveted together which was a long and labor intensive process and not nearly as strong.
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| Before and after picture of raw titanium after one hit on the press in this case the bulkhead of an F-15 fighter jet |
The Iron Giant or the Fifty as it is also know, is still producing parts for very modern machines. It is a 50,000 ton press which means it can put that much force on a piece of metal. The actual weight of the machine is 16 million pounds. It can shape titanium, one of the hardest and lightest metals, into any shape by putting 100 million pounds of pressure on it, in seconds.
For production methods that involve speed, quality and strength this is a huge step forward. What took days now takes seconds to build. During WW2 it was Rosie the Riveter who put the giant air planes together piece by piece in a long and painstaking process and assembly line. When the U.S. started using the Mesta 50 in the early 1950s, mostly in response to the Soviets using captured German presses, it was a leap forward. Even though the giant press was a strategic development to further the U.S. against the Soviets, it is still being used today and will likely still be in use for decades. There is no substitute for its incredible blows. Vulcan's mythical hammer still lives.
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