The Fifty

February 13, 2012 1:09 AM

It towers 51 feet high, extending a further 36 feet below ground. It weighs approximately 16 million pounds. And it's capable of delivering 50,000 metric tons of compressive force. "The Fifty" is the largest hydraulic closed-die forging press in the world. Chances are, you've interacted with something built in part by The Fifty: every flying manned U.S. military aircraft (and every aircraft built by Boeing and Airbus) uses parts forged by it. Built in 1955, the press has recently completed a $100 million refurb, and is now back online in Alcoa's Cleveland Works facility.

The steel "bolts" (if you can call them that) which support this behemoth are 40 inches wide and 76 feet long. Four sections of each column were threaded and fitted with four steel nuts, each 52 inches in diameter. Eight of the largest nuts weigh 52 tons each.

The press, which stands eight stories tall and weighs 8,000 tons, responds instantly and precisely to the lone operator’s hand on a lever just three inches long. His slightest touch governs 2100 tons of moving weight and can apply 50,000 tons of forging force.

This fantastic PDF from 1981 has even more detail (and pictures!), though it's unclear if any of the press's specifications may have changed in the most recent rebuild.

posted by disillusioned (79 comments total)

Whoah. Couple snippets:

If the logistics could somehow be worked out, the Fifty could bench-press the battleship Iowa, with 860 tons to spare.

Machines that far out of human scale are awe-inspiring. That's kind of the same feeling I get from the really big steam locomotives. Those were such marvelous inventions.... incredible power, harnessed to our whim.

Another interesting bit:

Finding itself suddenly at a disadvantage to the Soviets, the U.S. government decided to do something frankly Soviet in nature: it ordered the construction of a series of massive forges and directed industry in their production and use. The now-forgotten Heavy Press Program, inaugurated in 1950 and completed in 1957, would ultimately result in 10 forges built with taxpayer dollars: four presses (including the Fifty) and six extruders—giant toothpaste tubes squeezing out long, complex metal structures such as wing ribs and missile bodies.

At least eight of the forges are still working today.

Government spending is usually wealth-destructive, but sometimes it's intelligent investment, and that's a good example. With sixty years of service, I'd say we got our money's worth.
posted by Malor at 1:20 AM on February 13, 2012

So our entire air fleet depends on a single 60 year old artifact for its construction? Am I the only person who doesn't find that comforting in the least?
posted by 1adam12 at 1:20 AM on February 13, 2012 [3 favorites]

Finally, a reason to visit Cleveland!

(the Atlantic article was disappointingly short. I'll bet there's a ton of folklore around the construction and bringup of a machine like that. I hope someone is collecting it before the original workers die off) .
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 1:21 AM on February 13, 2012 [2 favorites]

Every U.S. military aircraft? (places discreet phone call to Hank Scorpio, obtains ownership of an NFL franchise)
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 1:22 AM on February 13, 2012 [5 favorites]

Very cool; I love industrial machinery, even if most of it gives me the heebie "I'd like to keep my fingers" jeebies.

Government spending is usually wealth-destructive
Maybe for the 1%, but a lot of "wealth destructive" government spending benefits society at large.
posted by maxwelton at 1:28 AM on February 13, 2012 [13 favorites]

Government spending is usually wealth-destructive

I caught that too, what about infrastructure such as highways, railways and libraries that promote creation of wealth?

This press is seriously impressive though.
posted by arcticseal at 1:33 AM on February 13, 2012 [7 favorites]

So our entire air fleet depends on a single 60 year old artifact for its construction? Am I the only person who doesn't find that comforting in the least?

60 years isn't that long for a well maintained press.

Last time you flew in a 737 there's a good chance the frame was over 40 years old. And apparently a 100% chance it included parts provided by this machine.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 1:35 AM on February 13, 2012 [3 favorites]

(the Atlantic article was disappointingly short. I'll bet there's a ton of folklore around the construction and bringup of a machine like that. I hope someone is collecting it before the original workers die off) .

The writer of the article is writing a book on the subject.
posted by Jehan at 1:40 AM on February 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

This press is seriously impressive though.

Well, there's no such thing as bad press.

I'll show myself out...
posted by ShutterBun at 1:44 AM on February 13, 2012 [42 favorites]

So our entire air fleet depends on a single 60 year old artifact for its construction? Am I the only person who doesn't find that comforting in the least?

There is a press (though much smaller) in Sheffield, still in commercial use after 115 years. I guess these things are built to last.
posted by Jehan at 1:46 AM on February 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

I caught that too, what about infrastructure such as highways, railways and libraries that promote creation of wealth?

Yep, that's the 1% of government spending.
posted by chavenet at 1:46 AM on February 13, 2012

Very cool.

Re: built to last... A little sister (which would be called the Twelve, but isn't) was used to armor a ships in WWII, and now sits in the parking lot of a Lowe's in Homestead, Pennsylvania. When the Homestead Works closed, and was redeveloped into a strip of big boxes, they dismantled the plant around the press and left it in place. It was too expensive to dismantle, and too heavy to move without reinforcing the roads or rails. It'll be there essentially forever, as, I suspect, will The Fifty, as a monument to the 20th century golden age of American heavy industry.
posted by Vetinari at 1:53 AM on February 13, 2012 [16 favorites]

I'll bet there's a ton of folklore around the construction and bringup of a machine like that. I hope someone is collecting it before the original workers die off

It would take some peer pressure...
posted by hal9k at 2:15 AM on February 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

the Atlantic article was disappointingly short

Not to worry, I'm sure there will be a Bones episode based on it soon.

(and once again I will forget that these days the show is constantly trying to out-ick itself, and sit down to watch it with lunch).
posted by titus-g at 2:42 AM on February 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

I think it is great that there is a National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark committee.

I wonder what the other landmarks are.
posted by Ad hominem at 2:54 AM on February 13, 2012 [3 favorites]

But will it crush a Terminator to the extent that Cyberdyne can't recover any useful parts?
posted by alby at 3:18 AM on February 13, 2012 [9 favorites]

German engineers developed a new technique for shaping the temperamental metal: press forging. Components made by German forges, using both magnesium and aluminum, helped build the Third Reich’s war machine. But at the end of that conflict, the Soviets took the most powerful forge home with them.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., Rosie the Riveter was still piecing together components out of layers of heavy steel plate. Finding itself suddenly at a disadvantage to the Soviets, the U.S. government decided to do something frankly Soviet in nature: it ordered the construction of a series of massive forges and directed industry in their production and use. The now-forgotten Heavy Press Program, inaugurated in 1950 and completed in 1957, would ultimately result in 10 forges built with taxpayer dollars: four presses (including the Fifty) and six extruders—giant toothpaste tubes squeezing out long, complex metal structures such as wing ribs and missile bodies.

As much as I don't miss the threat of nuclear annihilation hanging over my head, I have to say the Cold War drove a lot of impressive technology. Too bad we can't come up with a common cause today that would push us to similar accomplishments (I'm looking at you, climate change deniers). I look forward to the book about this.
posted by TedW at 3:35 AM on February 13, 2012

I wonder what the other landmarks are.

In case you're still wondering.
posted by IvoShandor at 3:44 AM on February 13, 2012 [14 favorites]

An amazing machine. It's interesting that they thought it was worth spending $100m on a refurb, rather than building a new one.

IvoShandor, that would make a great post to the front page.
posted by carter at 3:51 AM on February 13, 2012

In case you're still wondering.

Would make a great TV series. Discovery or TLC, make it happen.
posted by Ad hominem at 4:25 AM on February 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

We need this in operating condition, if for no other reason than that, if the thunder god Thor returns to earth, he has something to do bench presses with.
posted by Halloween Jack at 5:01 AM on February 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

Strange no mention of the loan of King Kong from Universal Pictures who was the only one with big enough hands to pick up the wrench used to tighten the 52" diameter nuts
posted by digsrus at 5:03 AM on February 13, 2012 [2 favorites]

IvoShandor, that would make a great post to the front page.

By all means. I've already fulfilled my quota for the day.
posted by IvoShandor at 5:03 AM on February 13, 2012

As a Clevelander - this is great news, and it would be wonderful if our pathetic local press would pick up on more stories like this. Alcoa's plant here has a lot of history, but Alcoa as a company has also given back a substantial amount to the town.

Due to the refurbishment costs they had threatened to close the plant a few years back. I'm glad they did not and that the stamping press is back online.
posted by tgrundke at 5:04 AM on February 13, 2012

An amazing machine. It's interesting that they thought it was worth spending $100m on a refurb, rather than building a new one.

The ten machines built under the Heavy Press Program cost $279 million in total (this is according to Wikipedia). Given that this was one of the larger machines, it probably cost greater than a tenth of the total cost. Even so, $27.9 million in 1955 is about $229 million today. I guess that replacement would have been at least three times the cost of refurbishment, although of course it's hard to calculate in that way.
posted by Jehan at 5:05 AM on February 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

Very cool; I love industrial machinery, even if most of it gives me the heebie "I'd like to keep my fingers" jeebies.

This machine won't just crush your fingers. It has enough force to crush the fingers of every person on earth, simultaneously.
posted by charlie don't surf at 5:07 AM on February 13, 2012 [4 favorites]

Vetinari: "A little sister now sits in the parking lot of a Lowe's"

Now that's the contemporary American way. There needs to be an investigation into why Alcoa foolishly wasted precious shareholder dollars on this antique product of government meddling. This type of outdated thinking needs to be quashed at all costs if the USA is to lead the world in this new century of high finance and service sectors.
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 5:07 AM on February 13, 2012 [2 favorites]

every flying manned U.S. military aircraft (and every aircraft built by Boeing and Airbus) uses parts forged by it.

Seeing as it broke down two years ago, and that there hasn't been a global moratorium on aircraft production since, I'm going to go ahead and assume they mean every type of Boeing, Airbus and military aircraft.
posted by bicyclefish at 5:15 AM on February 13, 2012

The steel "bolts" (if you can call them that) which support this behemoth are 40 inches wide and 76 feet long. Four sections of each column were threaded and fitted with four steel nuts, each 52 inches in diameter. Eight of the largest nuts weigh 52 tons each.

Goddamnit Lowe's, you said this socket set here was absolutely comprehensive, but I'm not seeing a 16" socket.
posted by kmz at 5:20 AM on February 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

I think they've just found the location for the next Bond movie's climactic showdown. "If you will not accept my offer, Mr Bond, I must put the squeeze on you!"
posted by ZsigE at 5:21 AM on February 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

Wow. I used to go running past that thing. There's a nature trail along the Cuyahoga River that goes past the Alcoa plant. Here it is on Google Maps. The building itself is huge but nondescript.
posted by mcmile at 5:21 AM on February 13, 2012

Jehan:
The ten machines built under the Heavy Press Program cost $279 million in total (this is according to Wikipedia). Given that this was one of the larger machines, it probably cost greater than a tenth of the total cost. Even so, $27.9 million in 1955 is about $229 million today. I guess that replacement would have been at least three times the cost of refurbishment, although of course it's hard to calculate in that way.

And that's not including the additional costs of increased OSHA/EPA requirements. Could easily be a 5:1 savings or greater.
posted by IAmBroom at 5:34 AM on February 13, 2012

Government spending is usually wealth-destructive...

Then we need another definition of "wealth".
posted by DU at 5:34 AM on February 13, 2012 [11 favorites]

Seeing as it broke down two years ago, and that there hasn't been a global moratorium on aircraft production since, I'm going to go ahead and assume they mean every type of Boeing, Airbus and military aircraft.

bicyclefish: I suppose a multi-year stockpile of wing parts isn't unreasonable, if there's only one stamper in service. Have there been any new designs stamped out in that period?
posted by IAmBroom at 5:36 AM on February 13, 2012

IAmBroom: Not that I'm an expert in such things, but have the production designs for the 787 and the A380, with their respective torturous histories, been final long enough to drum up that backlog? Then again, who knows what we're talking about here. Maybe it's a part so basic it's common across every type...?
posted by bicyclefish at 5:42 AM on February 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

It's good that this is repaired, but the real manufacturing sustainability question is: could we make another one? The tooling to make this device is more interesting to me than the final product.
posted by scruss at 5:55 AM on February 13, 2012 [5 favorites]

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.

I read that as: Words...250 tons...words...yard-thick...words...16 blarglefarbs...words...eight...words...50 blorksmagles.

Some amounts are just too much to wrap my head around. And I love stuff like this. Sort of How It's Made porn.
posted by Splunge at 6:16 AM on February 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

The tooling to make this device is more interesting to me than the final product.

Lots of big machinery in use on youtube, likehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbvRPLHq2Soe with an 8' chuck. Or these boring mills. Warning, watching these videos may send you down a rabbit hole of time wasting, obsessive youtube viewing.
posted by 445supermag at 6:20 AM on February 13, 2012 [2 favorites]

So our entire air fleet depends on a single 60 year old artifact for its construction?

Seriously, they don't make them like they used to. I worked in my college's machine shop while I was there, and the shop manager told a story of going to visit the Sikorsky plant in Connecticut, where he watched a 100+ year old milling machine chewing through solid blocks of metal to produce rotor blades. We had a horizontal mill in our own shop that was vintage... 1912 or so. Other than sharpening the blades occasionally, they just don't. break. down.
posted by backseatpilot at 6:22 AM on February 13, 2012 [4 favorites]

I'm so filled with glee after reading this post that I hardly know what to do with myself. You've made my Monday, disillusioned.
posted by HopperFan at 6:50 AM on February 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

It's good that this is repaired, but the real manufacturing sustainability question is: could we make another one? The tooling to make this device is more interesting to me than the final product.

Sandcasting is easily scalable, scruss. The rest is just finishing machining, and quality-checking, which may be achievable without scaling up (by use of "portable" equipment - tools meant to be placed within/next to/upon the structure itself).

Now, producing 250 tons of molten iron at one time may be a challenge... Wikipedia claims 5580-m^3 furnace volumes are the largest, which is (5580*7.86/2.2/2000) ~50 tons.

Tricky.
posted by IAmBroom at 6:53 AM on February 13, 2012

could we make another one? The tooling to make this device is more interesting to me than the final product.

The problem isn't going to be the tooling in the sense you are thinking of it. The problem would be the ability to pour those huge castings. That process isn't repeatable in that the sand castings are one-time use only, and for the most part the US industrial base has decided castings like that are best outsourced to cheaper labor countries. It doesn't mean they don't know how to do it, but it does mean they'll probably fuck it up the first few times they tried to do it, because everyone who actually poured castings that big in the US is retired or dead. On the flip side - once they did it 2 or 3 times they would probably have a pretty good idea about what they are doing.

The rest of it is "just" a really big hydraulic system, but there are other things out there on a similar scale today.


BTW there are other facilities with big presses in the US
posted by JPD at 6:54 AM on February 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

I love the ASME photo of the guy standing next to the gigantic crosshead, measuring some part of it with a micrometer.
posted by aramaic at 6:55 AM on February 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

You know what else is amazing in this whole story? That the Russians somehow managed to whisk the 30 thousand tonne press from the middle of ruined Germany and send it home with the other plunder. Maybe they sent it via ship to Murmansk, but then what?
Maybe it's still in Murmansk?...
There's an epic tale to be told about it, I'm sure.
posted by hat_eater at 7:16 AM on February 13, 2012 [6 favorites]

We had a horizontal mill in our own shop that was vintage... 1912 or so. Other than sharpening the blades occasionally, they just don't. break. down.

Seriously. There are still thousands, if not more, of 1930s-1950s lathes all over the place doing very good work. South Bend, Hardinge, Atlas, Logan--these names are still revered and not just from nostalgia. The actual machines they built still work and work well.
posted by DU at 7:19 AM on February 13, 2012

Is there something about the pics in the pdf (and the whole thing really) that feels a bit like that old kids' book Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel?
posted by colie at 7:26 AM on February 13, 2012 [4 favorites]

Boing Boing has a nice feature mentioning the Mesta today as well.
posted by CharlesV42 at 7:36 AM on February 13, 2012

could we make another one?

Interesting question, but I'd also be curious about "Do we need another one?", and "If not, why not?". More questions about how societies change than about engineering.

Also, a great name from the engineering landmarks list: Manitou & Pike's Peak Cog Railway (1891)
posted by benito.strauss at 7:50 AM on February 13, 2012

No we don't really need more of them, but we do need the ones we have. The problem is if you make a new one before the old one falls apart you probably end up with none.
posted by JPD at 8:15 AM on February 13, 2012

You know what else is amazing in this whole story? That the Russians somehow managed to whisk the 30 thousand tonne press from the middle of ruined Germany and send it home with the other plunder.

The Russians actually did a lot of that. Leica introduced an entirely new camera design after the war because the Russians just picked up the old factory and took it home with them.
posted by b1tr0t at 8:19 AM on February 13, 2012

Once upon a time (aww, dammit, here he goes again...) I worked in auto manufacturing, and one of my tasks was to run and load a 30 ton press. I remember the thing being about the shape and size of a Jawa sandcrawler, if slightly less beat. It held a series of eight hydraulic dies and nine pneumatic mover arms. Square steel blanks went in one end and shiny new auto parts gleaming in their heavyweight gear oil came out the other, to be stacked and crated by me. In between, I stood at the controls and watched the parts move thru the machine in a weird square-dance kind of routine. Like most people who become used to foibles and quirks of mechanical things, we had an affectionate nickname for her: Bertha.

The plant was Japanese owned and the die-making crew were all from the home country and very skilled machinists during the day and heavy consumers of sake at night who introduced me to both karaoke and that potent rice wine at the local bar, which may have been the only redneck biker bar with an amazing selection of sake, kept in stock just to keep the machinists money flowing.

Regarding the bolts holding the dies: I remember the nuts on our press to be big enough to stretch from my wrist to the end of my ring finger, and we used a 5 foot long wrench (nicknamed, appropriately enough the "Big Johnson") to torque them down. What I would do is put the box end of the wrench on the nut and lean on the open end with all my weight. Once I wasn't paying close enough attention and the wrench slipped off the nut and sent me knuckles-first into the dies. Everyone stopped and looked at me as I slowly picked my way out of the machine, hands hanging limply, as I slowly tried everyone of my fingers before gingerly removing my work gloves and checking for cuts. Being unhurt except for my pride, we went on with life, until that night at the bar when the machinists toasted me as the only person to go one round hand-to-hand with Bertha and live to tell the tale.
posted by 1f2frfbf at 8:21 AM on February 13, 2012 [16 favorites]

Leica introduced an entirely new camera design after the war because the Russians just picked up the old factory and took it home with them.

Does anyone, anywhere document this in detail? I own some lenses made from those factory ruins, but I really, really want to learn more about how that whole thing went down.
posted by fake at 9:36 AM on February 13, 2012

May its Spirit be ever eager and its power never lacking. Praise be the Omnissiah!
posted by Slackermagee at 9:53 AM on February 13, 2012

You know what else is amazing in this whole story? That the Russians somehow managed to whisk the 30 thousand tonne press from the middle of ruined Germany and send it home with the other plunder.

I was wondering about that too. I wonder what the weight of the single largest part was.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:08 AM on February 13, 2012

So our entire air fleet depends on a single 60 year old artifact for its construction? Am I the only person who doesn't find that comforting in the least?

You have it exactly backwards. I'll take an overbuilt and well-engineered artifact over a flimsy, complex, error-prone, modern piece of crap any day.
posted by swift at 10:16 AM on February 13, 2012 [3 favorites]

Does anyone, anywhere document this in detail? I own some lenses made from those factory ruins, but I really, really want to learn more about how that whole thing went down.

Wikipedia mentions the looting of the Zeiss factory in Jena.
posted by b1tr0t at 10:27 AM on February 13, 2012

It's interesting that they thought it was worth spending $100m on a refurb, rather than building a new one.

It's not clear to me that one could be built today, at least without truly staggering costs far in excess of what it cost originally. The heavy industrial infrastructure just doesn't exist anymore, at least not in the US, and transporting the castings from someplace where they still make things that large (presumably in Asia) would be prohibitive. You'd need to specially reinforce the railroad grades along the entire route the parts were going to take, at the very least; it'd be a huge undertaking.

The PDF discusses a bit about The Fifty's creation; they had to build a new and unique milling machine just to finish some of the larger parts. And those parts alone are 300+ ton castings. That's larger even than nuclear reactor pressure vessels, and there are only a very limited number of places in the world that can make those.* (For comparison, Columbus Castings claims that it's the producer of the largest monolithic steel castings in the US, and they only advertise up to 70,000 pounds -- a tenth of The Fifty's largest parts.)

It looks to me like The Fifty happened to be created at just the right time, when the US was at its heavy-industrial peak and had a lot of spare capacity left over from the war, so as to be practical. But those conditions are no longer the case.

Perhaps a press of equivalent capacity could be redesigned to avoid exceeding the limits of the modern steel industry, but I think it's more likely that the parts produced on The Fifty would just have to be redesigned instead for smaller presses.

* Granted, that list is artificially short due to the requirement for an "N stamp" certifying that the facility can produce nuclear-reactor-grade components. But I'm not sure that a heavy press isn't an equivalent challenge from a quality standpoint.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:56 AM on February 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

We used to make shit in this country, build shit. Now we just put our hand in the next guy's pocket.
posted by stet at 11:04 AM on February 13, 2012 [6 favorites]

Now, producing 250 tons of molten iron at one time may be a challenge... Wikipedia claims 5580-m^3 furnace volumes are the largest, which is (5580*7.86/2.2/2000) ~50 tons.

I think you messed up the conversion there. The weight of 5580 m^3 of iron is way, way more than 50 tons.
posted by madmethods at 11:05 AM on February 13, 2012

Government spending is usually wealth-destructive, but sometimes it's intelligent investment, and that's a good example. With sixty years of service, I'd say we got our money's worth.

*rolls eyes* Ridiculous.
posted by delmoi at 11:21 AM on February 13, 2012

The weight of 5580 m^3 of iron is way, way more than 50 tons.

It's 4.39*10⁷ kg, or 43,900 metric tons.
posted by delmoi at 11:25 AM on February 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

Wikipedia claims 5580-m^3 furnace volumes are the largest, which is (5580*7.86/2.2/2000) ~50 tons.

Wolfram Alpha figures that 5580 cu meters of steel is about 4.39E10 grams, or 48,000 short tons. That seems really large, even for the largest furnaces ... but perhaps it's possible.

The very large parts of The Fifty were made by "teaming" multiple furnaces and pouring them into a single mold to produce a very large part. So it's possible to produce a single part that's larger than the largest furnace at a foundry, but not larger than the total installed furnace capacity.

I'll bet there's a ton of folklore around the construction and bringup of a machine like that.

Semi-related: last year I visited the Carrie Furnace portion of the Rivers of Steel National Historic Site, which is basically right across the river from where the Homestead Works and the Mesta plant was located. (In fact I'd bet you that the iron for The Fifty was originally smelted at Carrie Furnace.) I can't overstate how worthwhile it was, and I'd encourage anyone in the area or within driving distance of Homestead to do it. (You need to get tickets in advance, and they only offer the tour a few times each season.) But the best part is being able to talk to the volunteers, who are mostly guys who worked on the furnaces when the plant was in operation. The scale of the place, and the fact that multiple generations of men worked in the same jobs, in some cases on the same machinery, was...outside my experience.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:30 AM on February 13, 2012 [2 favorites]

and transporting the castings from someplace where they still make things that large (presumably in Asia) would be prohibitive

Actually it wouldn't be that bad. Cleveland is a port city and there's a good chance you could get a barge up the Cuyahoga almost to the site. I wouldn't be surprised to find out they're using that route for replacement parts today.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 11:33 AM on February 13, 2012

I guess these things are built to last.

A solid 5580-m^3 block of ductile iron. That's pretty much the most durable thing human beings have ever built.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 11:45 AM on February 13, 2012

This machine won't just crush your fingers. It has enough force to crush the fingers of every person on earth, simultaneously.-- charlie don't surf

That's seventy billion fingers. Human bone has a tensile strength of 130 Mpa, assuming it takes 1cm² of surface contact on a finger before compressive pressure above 130mpa would start breaking a bone (since they're lumpy), that means the total surface area of all human fingers would be 7E10 * 1cm², or 7 million square meters. 130 MPa over 7 million square meters would require 130*7 * (1million)^2 = 910 trillion newtons of force, or 92.79 billion metric tons of force. This press does 50k. So you're wrong by at least an order of 1 million.
posted by delmoi at 11:46 AM on February 13, 2012 [16 favorites]

Calculating the force required to crush all seventy billion human fingers on earth simultaneously. God, I love Metafilter. :D
posted by xedrik at 12:41 PM on February 13, 2012 [5 favorites]

A forging press is—begging the forgiveness of the engineering gods—essentially a waffle iron for metal.

Tsk Tsk, I would have accepted maybe "a crimping iron for metal"
posted by mattoxic at 1:19 PM on February 13, 2012

I can't believe I CTRL-F'd "your mom" and found nothing in this thread.

I also can't believe that I've been sitting here for 5 minutes and haven't thought of a good joke myself.

Finally, YOU wouldn't believe the CTRL-F'ing I gave your I'll just see myself out...
posted by Aizkolari at 1:57 PM on February 13, 2012

The weight of 5580 m^3 of iron is way, way more than 50 tons.

It's 4.39*107 kg, or 43,900 metric tons.

Yep. My sin was in the implicit conversion of g/cm^3 to kg/m^3. Dropped an order of magnitude there, for each dimension.

Off to the blackboard, to type
>10 Print "Hello world!"
>20 Goto 10
a hundred times.
posted by IAmBroom at 2:44 PM on February 13, 2012

This post marks the first time I want to quote Team America World Police's America... FUCK YEAH! non-ironically.

Perhaps a press of equivalent capacity could be redesigned to avoid exceeding the limits of the modern steel industry, but I think it's more likely that the parts produced on The Fifty would just have to be redesigned instead for smaller presses.

I wonder if in the age of laser positioning, very slightly better metalurgy / materials science, and computer design if a press this size could be built in place by forging very large blocks of steel and milling them with some kind of one off bolt on top mill? Alternatively, could a site be selected that was barge accessible to ship pieces this size into?
posted by BrotherCaine at 3:13 PM on February 13, 2012

Over at boingboing Mark's gonna 3-d print this.
posted by roboton666 at 4:11 PM on February 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

It's not clear to me that one could be built today, at least without truly staggering costs far in excess of what it cost originally. The heavy industrial infrastructure just doesn't exist anymore, at least not in the US, and transporting the castings from someplace where they still make things that large (presumably in Asia) would be prohibitive.

Oh bosh. The Fifty is a little pipsqueak on the scale of machines they're building nowadays.
posted by charlie don't surf at 4:24 PM on February 13, 2012

Much as I find those marine engines awesome (actually, my first attempt at a post on the Blue was about one of them — it was deleted as a double), I don't think there's any monolithic castings in them that approach the size of those in The Fifty. The largest part is the crankshaft, and it's "semi-built", not a monolithic pour like the big parts of The Fifty. Still cool, but not on the same scale.

Here are some construction photos of a semi-built marine diesel crankshaft; I'm not sure if it's from a RTA96 but it's from something on the same order of magnitude. The finished part is quite large but the individual billets that are forged are reasonably-sized. For The Fifty, there were individual billets forged which were the size of the entire finished crankshaft (300t). That said, the final turning of the shaft on the giant lathe is truly impressive, and the lathe looks similar to the one Mesta used to finish and trepan the press shafts, so that capability still exists.

My guess is that if you were really going to make something the size of The Fifty again, you'd do it in a way that's closer to how the crankshaft is built, rather than trying to pour or forge multi-hundred-ton pieces of metal. There are apparently some presses in China and Russia that are bigger than the 50kT ones built by the Heavy Press Program; I wonder how they are built.

Incidentally, the only other 50,000-ton press in the U.S. is located in Grafton, MA at Wyman-Gordon. It was built just before the one in Ohio, and seems to be slightly smaller in stature (perhaps more of it is underground). There are some photos of it under construction (the large excavation) and in use here. According to WP, all the undercarriages of the Space Shuttles were forged in Grafton.
posted by Kadin2048 at 5:03 PM on February 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

I wonder what it sounds like when the 50,000 ton force comes down and squishes the metal ingot. Is it a scrunch? A bang? A whimper?
posted by exphysicist345 at 6:13 PM on February 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

From the article on Boing Boing:

The Fifty was made by the Mesta Machine Company, just outside of Pittsburgh. The company went under in the mid-1980s. The only companies today capable of producing Heavy Press-size equipment are in Germany and Japan, with companies in Russia, Korea, and China rapidly catching up. China announced that it will build an 80,000-ton press — the biggest ever — to support its nascent aerospace industry.

Now is not the time for America to build new forges: eight really is enough.
posted by exphysicist345 at 6:36 PM on February 13, 2012

MetaFilter: Calculating the force required to crush all seventy billion human fingers on earth simultaneously.

backseatpilot writes "Seriously, they don't make them like they used to. I worked in my college's machine shop while I was there, and the shop manager told a story of going to visit the Sikorsky plant in Connecticut, where he watched a 100+ year old milling machine chewing through solid blocks of metal to produce rotor blades. We had a horizontal mill in our own shop that was vintage... 1912 or so. Other than sharpening the blades occasionally, they just don't. break. down."

Of course there is a survivor selection bias working here; all the machines that broke down aren't still being used. There was plenty of crap produced in the old days too.
posted by Mitheral at 7:43 PM on February 13, 2012

The steel mill I used to work summers at did eighty ton heats (as I remember it) and had two vessels. Given that you could have a ladle of steel sitting at the argon station (where you could tweak the metallurgy a bit) for the better part of a day (because something was wrong with the caster) and still pour it as per normal, I'm pretty sure it would be no problem for them to do a 250 ton casting - if they did castings rather than making sheet metal from slabs.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 9:33 PM on February 13, 2012

> these boring mills

Thanks, 445supermag, but I found that kind of ...
posted by scruss at 10:13 PM on February 13, 2012

Cool. My grandparents used to live not far from there, and we'd pass that Alcoa plant on the way to visit them. My dad always told me they made aluminum cans at that factory. Guess there was a lot more going on there.
posted by slogger at 6:09 AM on February 14, 2012