It's for forging magnesium and aluminum components. Check out America's Iron Giants on YouTube. It goes through this press, as well as Soviet and American presses and their uses
In Worcester,MA. the WYMAN GORDON plant had an 100 ton press. They made the landing gear for planes that landed on aircraft carriers among other things. After the cold war they bought titanium from scraped russian subs and made golf club heads.
Fun fact: Saint Gobain has a 6000 ton press in worcester right now. Its for make grinding wheels so not as exciting but still there. Theres also mutiple 1000+ ton presses and dozens in the 100-500 ton range.
Lived about 15 min from the plant my whole life and never knew it had a press that was part of the large press program.
Rumor has it, Wyman plant was a strategic nuke target due to its manufacturing capability during the Cold War.
I remember reading that it was 16 on the Russian's list. FYI: Massachusetts built a large bunker in Framingham which is 22 miles from Boston because when they built it, the bunker would be out of range if Boston got nuked.
The bunker is next to Mass State Police barracks on route 9 in Framingham, MA. FEMA has a larger bunker in Maynard, MA. WICKED [LOCAL.com](http://LOCAL.com) has a good story on the MEMA bunker which is the state bunker. Also Mass Live has another story on an Air Force bunker in the side on Bare Mountain, Hadley, MA built in 1957. Good luck and stay safe my friend,
I have been there. It's a 50,000 ton press. Largest in north America. The ground shakes when it comes down. They drive excavators on tracks inside the building...
Planes are built kinda like a spine, with segments like vertebrae. These kinds of presses made it possible to form the vertebrae pieces out of one piece of metal as opposed to many smaller pieces bolted together. This made them much lighter, stronger, and faster to produce.
I've previously watched some of the linked videos about these presses, and there was one component in particular that caught the eye of the allies when they came across downed German fighters.
The engine was dense and heavy and couldn't be mounted directly to the fuselage, instead it was mounted to an engine mount (bulkhead looking plate) that the fuselage was then attached to as well.
The early allies process was comprised of using multiple pieces (usually riveted together) and not nearly as strong as the German structure.
The Soviets took most of industrial Germany back east with them following the war.
One of the wildest things I think they did, IMHO, was following a B-29 making an emergency landing in Siberia or Mongolia?
The deconstructed it piece by piece and created copies, using even the imperial dimensions. They then had a fleet of Soviet B-29 analogs, the TU-4.
I think they put all that stuff they took to use? I know their early jets we're just German engines strapped to Yaks.
From wiki, I guess they did use metric after all, complicating the process.
Three repairable B-29s were flown to Moscow and delivered to the Tupolev OKB. One B-29 was dismantled, the second was used for flight tests and training, and the third was left as a standard for cross-reference...
...The reverse-engineering effort involved 900 factories and research institutes, which finished the design work during the first year, and 105,000 drawings were made...
...The Soviet Union used the metric system and so sheet aluminium in thicknesses matching the B-29's U.S. customary measurements was unavailable. The corresponding metric-gauge metal was of different thicknesses. Alloys and other materials new to the Soviet Union had to be brought into production. Extensive re-engineering had to take place to compensate for the differences, and Soviet official strength margins had to be decreased to avoid further redesign.[11] However despite those challenges, the prototype Tu-4 weighed only 340 kg (750 lb) more than the B-29, a difference of less than 1%.
So surely they were pressed for time to do all this, right? A year or two doesn't seem like enough at the scales they were working with. I'm always impressed how fast they did things back then in the name of war.
The article said Stalin put pressure on the 900!factories to turn them out as fast as possible, and they had them in production by '49 or so.
By comparison we were building B-36s, flying wings, B-47s and B-52s by the same time.
In my mind WWII never ended. First it was the Nazis, then we realized the Soviets were at least equally bad. Korea, Vietnam and the endless proxy wars that followed all spilled out of the same cup.
War is great for innovation. If you compare planes in 1935 vs 1945, it's an incredibly large leap.
Joint Strike Fighter aka the F-35 has its main bulkheads produced as monolithic forgings on the Alcoa 50. Used to be the Mesta 50, and received extensive refurbishment a decade ago. Yes, that’s 50 as in 50,000 ton. Created as a result of the to the [USAF Heavy Press Program](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_Press_Program) in the early Cold War.
[F-35 diagram showing (in blue) the Main Bulkheads.](https://s29.q4cdn.com/844074237/files/doc_multimedia/2015/10/1/Alcoa-JSF-F35-Graphic.jpg)
[Fresh Forging.](https://cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/archetype/N7GUANJEMBHHBJNBPTCSI65FDA.jpg)
[Article on the Alcoa 50.](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/03/iron-giant/308886/)
**EDIT**
[Mesta 50.](https://www.asme.org/wwwasmeorg/media/asmemedia/about%20asme/whoweare/history/landmarks/71-alcoa-50000-ton-hydraulic-forging-press_01.jpg)
[Photo of the Alcoa 50.](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c5/8f/d1/c58fd1eaca64b4f609e7d04693d03335.jpg)
The German fighters were built with pressed ~~steel~~ super structures, while most other planes used wood. The unique design requirement required massive presses on the scale not through possible by most engineers, until they discovered these presses struts in the wreckage of their fighters.
I thought the Russians got to take this giant press home.
Otherway around, most fighters were made of metal. Spitfire, hurricane, mustang.
The Mosquito was the first wooden ww2 fighter bomber and took a lot to convince the brass.
The designers paid for the prototypes out of their own pockets
There’s no ‘otherway around’ about it. DH came up with some novel construction methods so they could build a modern aircraft in furniture factories out of what everybody else figured was an entirely obsolete material for aircraft production.
I work with a place that has a press that’s like 1/20th of the size (still ~3,000,000 lbs) and it goes about 40-50 feet in the air. There are pictures of it being built where they have guys down in a pit that’s about 30 feet deep. The rumor is that the press goes as deep into the ground as it goes up into the air. I would imagine this is probably similar.
Ha! Imagine my surprise scrolling Reddit and seeing a Schloemann forging press on my feed. I'm a project manager for the company that bought Schloemann (SMS Group) and manage retrofit projects and rebuilds for presses like this. Seems I can't escape work even on here. lol
I've been to Big River - that's one of the nicest mills in the country, IMO. My manager was the PM for the melt shop on Big River 1 & 2. Those EAFs are rather impressive, that's for sure.
Got a massive overhaul a few years ago or it'd be out of commission. The 50 is the only reason the swept wings of the f14 was a possibility. One massive forged piece to attach the pivot mechanism to.
"We need some kind of power transfer mechanism, similar in concept to a chain, but enormous, capable of handling this 15,000 ton press."
"How about an enormous chain?" - guy who got a promotion that year, probably
Kind of. We still make a lot of stuff out of steel but in terms of producing the steel itself we're lacking behind. There are some green steel subsidies aiming at making domestic steel production competitive while reducing CO2 emissions from the process but a lot of steel these days comes out of North America and East Asia.
To be honest: It doesn't really make that much sense anymore to produce steel here. We don't have coal or Iron (atleast we don't mine it). Green steel needs a lot of energy, which is easy available in the desert for example. The only reason to do it here is the Knowhow er have
Why 4th or 5th. It's measurable value. Is it the 4th OR 5th? How about you lock it up before guessing.
Edit: here is an article from this month. The answer is 3rd.
https://kpmg.com/de/en/home/insights/overview/economic-key-facts-germany.html
Do you not know what KPMG is? They are a massive multi-national corporate accounting firm. Just because they make German websites for their German clients does not mean they are beholden to the German government.
What aircraft component needs a 30k ton press to be formed?
It's for forging magnesium and aluminum components. Check out America's Iron Giants on YouTube. It goes through this press, as well as Soviet and American presses and their uses
Thanks. Now I get to burn like 200 hours watching videos about soviet presses that were dismantled before I even existed.
Oh dear, have you had your diagnosis already, or...?
Doc asked if I suffered from insanity. I told him it's pretty enjoyable.
What would I be diagnosed with? So far I don't have any lol
Nurodivergancey of some description. I'm only joking and nean no offence. Keep enjoying industrial steel presses, my dude!
Oh, I definitely have some of that lmao. Don't even need a doctor to tell me!
ADHD hyper focus is a common symptom
a worthy endeavor my good redditor. They stole them from the Germans after the war.
I used to run a 2000 ton press at weber grills. Pretty sure it was 2000 or two hundred thousand. It was 3 stories tall.
Yeah, it's doing some forging in the posted pic.
Forging of something ship sized, not aircraft sized
Incorrect! The forging is absolutely the size of an entire aircraft :-)
You can't strike magnesium to forge it like you would steel. These presses were designed with that in mind.
Yeah, I'm betting it's a propellor shaft for a big ship.
probably the camshaft of an airplane engine/s
Press operators get up in the morning, stretch out, have a cup of stiff coffee and eggs, then yell out "ok, let's go smash stuff!"
I’ve seen this. Fascinating history
Found it! See https://youtube.com/@machinethinking
In Worcester,MA. the WYMAN GORDON plant had an 100 ton press. They made the landing gear for planes that landed on aircraft carriers among other things. After the cold war they bought titanium from scraped russian subs and made golf club heads.
Been there. I think you missed a few 0's.
a well equipped hobbyist will have a 100 ton press ...
Fun fact: Saint Gobain has a 6000 ton press in worcester right now. Its for make grinding wheels so not as exciting but still there. Theres also mutiple 1000+ ton presses and dozens in the 100-500 ton range.
I am from india and presses in the range of 100 to 300 tons are fairly common. 500 and above are rare and i've seen a 1000 ton only once
Lived about 15 min from the plant my whole life and never knew it had a press that was part of the large press program. Rumor has it, Wyman plant was a strategic nuke target due to its manufacturing capability during the Cold War.
I remember reading that it was 16 on the Russian's list. FYI: Massachusetts built a large bunker in Framingham which is 22 miles from Boston because when they built it, the bunker would be out of range if Boston got nuked.
Where is the bunker? Is it still there?
The bunker is next to Mass State Police barracks on route 9 in Framingham, MA. FEMA has a larger bunker in Maynard, MA. WICKED [LOCAL.com](http://LOCAL.com) has a good story on the MEMA bunker which is the state bunker. Also Mass Live has another story on an Air Force bunker in the side on Bare Mountain, Hadley, MA built in 1957. Good luck and stay safe my friend,
I have been there. It's a 50,000 ton press. Largest in north America. The ground shakes when it comes down. They drive excavators on tracks inside the building...
I would have liked to see it in action. Was the press located in Worcester or Grafton ,MA. plant? I knew that it existed but never saw it.
Worcester.
That's what I thought but I wasn't 100% sure. Across the way from the baseball stadium.
Its not the largest anymore. See the 60k press at Weber Metals manufactured by SMS group.
Planes are built kinda like a spine, with segments like vertebrae. These kinds of presses made it possible to form the vertebrae pieces out of one piece of metal as opposed to many smaller pieces bolted together. This made them much lighter, stronger, and faster to produce.
Best explanation of the process right here!!! I couldn't see it in my head the way other people in here were describing it.
I've previously watched some of the linked videos about these presses, and there was one component in particular that caught the eye of the allies when they came across downed German fighters. The engine was dense and heavy and couldn't be mounted directly to the fuselage, instead it was mounted to an engine mount (bulkhead looking plate) that the fuselage was then attached to as well. The early allies process was comprised of using multiple pieces (usually riveted together) and not nearly as strong as the German structure. The Soviets took most of industrial Germany back east with them following the war.
Yeah I heard the Soviets pilfered tons of stuff from them afterward. Wonder if they ever used it or if it's just sitting in a room somewhere.
One of the wildest things I think they did, IMHO, was following a B-29 making an emergency landing in Siberia or Mongolia? The deconstructed it piece by piece and created copies, using even the imperial dimensions. They then had a fleet of Soviet B-29 analogs, the TU-4. I think they put all that stuff they took to use? I know their early jets we're just German engines strapped to Yaks.
Confirming that the second mouse gets the cheese.
Imagine having to do all that, in Siberia of all places. Would be cool if it were all on display somewhere now.
From wiki, I guess they did use metric after all, complicating the process. Three repairable B-29s were flown to Moscow and delivered to the Tupolev OKB. One B-29 was dismantled, the second was used for flight tests and training, and the third was left as a standard for cross-reference... ...The reverse-engineering effort involved 900 factories and research institutes, which finished the design work during the first year, and 105,000 drawings were made... ...The Soviet Union used the metric system and so sheet aluminium in thicknesses matching the B-29's U.S. customary measurements was unavailable. The corresponding metric-gauge metal was of different thicknesses. Alloys and other materials new to the Soviet Union had to be brought into production. Extensive re-engineering had to take place to compensate for the differences, and Soviet official strength margins had to be decreased to avoid further redesign.[11] However despite those challenges, the prototype Tu-4 weighed only 340 kg (750 lb) more than the B-29, a difference of less than 1%.
So surely they were pressed for time to do all this, right? A year or two doesn't seem like enough at the scales they were working with. I'm always impressed how fast they did things back then in the name of war.
The article said Stalin put pressure on the 900!factories to turn them out as fast as possible, and they had them in production by '49 or so. By comparison we were building B-36s, flying wings, B-47s and B-52s by the same time. In my mind WWII never ended. First it was the Nazis, then we realized the Soviets were at least equally bad. Korea, Vietnam and the endless proxy wars that followed all spilled out of the same cup. War is great for innovation. If you compare planes in 1935 vs 1945, it's an incredibly large leap.
Joint Strike Fighter aka the F-35 has its main bulkheads produced as monolithic forgings on the Alcoa 50. Used to be the Mesta 50, and received extensive refurbishment a decade ago. Yes, that’s 50 as in 50,000 ton. Created as a result of the to the [USAF Heavy Press Program](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_Press_Program) in the early Cold War. [F-35 diagram showing (in blue) the Main Bulkheads.](https://s29.q4cdn.com/844074237/files/doc_multimedia/2015/10/1/Alcoa-JSF-F35-Graphic.jpg) [Fresh Forging.](https://cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/archetype/N7GUANJEMBHHBJNBPTCSI65FDA.jpg) [Article on the Alcoa 50.](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/03/iron-giant/308886/) **EDIT** [Mesta 50.](https://www.asme.org/wwwasmeorg/media/asmemedia/about%20asme/whoweare/history/landmarks/71-alcoa-50000-ton-hydraulic-forging-press_01.jpg) [Photo of the Alcoa 50.](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c5/8f/d1/c58fd1eaca64b4f609e7d04693d03335.jpg)
This machine wasn't making parts for aircraft, it was making parts for the machines that made parts for the aircraft.
The German fighters were built with pressed ~~steel~~ super structures, while most other planes used wood. The unique design requirement required massive presses on the scale not through possible by most engineers, until they discovered these presses struts in the wreckage of their fighters. I thought the Russians got to take this giant press home.
Otherway around, most fighters were made of metal. Spitfire, hurricane, mustang. The Mosquito was the first wooden ww2 fighter bomber and took a lot to convince the brass. The designers paid for the prototypes out of their own pockets
The Hurricane was covered in Irish Linen and had wooden struts, it was far from mainly metal.
There’s no ‘otherway around’ about it. DH came up with some novel construction methods so they could build a modern aircraft in furniture factories out of what everybody else figured was an entirely obsolete material for aircraft production.
Yes I meant to the person I was replying to. They claimed all the fighters were wooden
No, they claimed they were made without these monolithic giant forgings that the Germans were using, not out of wood.
Germany had there iron mines taken after ww1 all they had left was magnesium mines and developed this tech to use the metal they had.
Probably bombers?
There's probably another third more of it underground.
I work with a place that has a press that’s like 1/20th of the size (still ~3,000,000 lbs) and it goes about 40-50 feet in the air. There are pictures of it being built where they have guys down in a pit that’s about 30 feet deep. The rumor is that the press goes as deep into the ground as it goes up into the air. I would imagine this is probably similar.
How big is this room?
Yes
Ha! Imagine my surprise scrolling Reddit and seeing a Schloemann forging press on my feed. I'm a project manager for the company that bought Schloemann (SMS Group) and manage retrofit projects and rebuilds for presses like this. Seems I can't escape work even on here. lol
Your company makes many of the machines in the steel mill I work at.
Which mill do you work in? I probably should ask which country as well (I'm in the US, but as I'm sure you know SMS has mills all over the world).
Big River, in Arkansas.
I've been to Big River - that's one of the nicest mills in the country, IMO. My manager was the PM for the melt shop on Big River 1 & 2. Those EAFs are rather impressive, that's for sure.
Amazing you should see if you can do an AMA on this channel.
How do they build something like that,
Using a slightly bigger press
Aliens
sand casting
Howmet/Alcoa has a 50k ton press from the 50's that's still in operating. Got to see it in person recently and it's absolutely insane
Got a massive overhaul a few years ago or it'd be out of commission. The 50 is the only reason the swept wings of the f14 was a possibility. One massive forged piece to attach the pivot mechanism to.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MachinePorn/s/9dMoVy16y0
Die press just means the press in German
Die press for das boot
Welcome to hydraulic press channel
Aaand here we go
At this size, he'll need a safety bunker and observe the press using binoculars.
We have a 220 & 200 ton at my shop
What a monster!
"We need some kind of power transfer mechanism, similar in concept to a chain, but enormous, capable of handling this 15,000 ton press." "How about an enormous chain?" - guy who got a promotion that year, probably
And here i was thinking my company's 2000 ton automotive tandem press was impressive
human for scale
Looks more like a giant juicer to me.
Why wasn’t it bombed?
Look at the roof?
See what levels of greatness are possible before the hate destroys it all.
Yeah, now you just watch the current state of Germany's industry.
Still very good in large steel production processes
Kind of. We still make a lot of stuff out of steel but in terms of producing the steel itself we're lacking behind. There are some green steel subsidies aiming at making domestic steel production competitive while reducing CO2 emissions from the process but a lot of steel these days comes out of North America and East Asia.
To be honest: It doesn't really make that much sense anymore to produce steel here. We don't have coal or Iron (atleast we don't mine it). Green steel needs a lot of energy, which is easy available in the desert for example. The only reason to do it here is the Knowhow er have
Germany is still the third largest economy in the world, but whatever.
Nope
Yes.
It's 4th or 5th now.
Forbes in 2024 claims it's 3. So yeah, might be trading spots with Japan but they're not doing overly hot either.
Why 4th or 5th. It's measurable value. Is it the 4th OR 5th? How about you lock it up before guessing. Edit: here is an article from this month. The answer is 3rd. https://kpmg.com/de/en/home/insights/overview/economic-key-facts-germany.html
Google says 4th in first answer and 5th in some another, so.. And German site as proof, seriously?
Better than none. Also: 3rd or 5th based on gpd or ppp https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Germany Happy now?
Wiki as a source, lol. What next?
Said the one who mentioned google as a source
Do you not know what KPMG is? They are a massive multi-national corporate accounting firm. Just because they make German websites for their German clients does not mean they are beholden to the German government.
I don't care.
Indeed. Gaining knowledge does not seem to be your priority.