A Cold War industrial monument

[Vympel]

F-35 saves Cleveland

Alcoa's famed Cleveland Works builds the single-piece, aluminum bulkheads for the Lockheed Martin F-35, perhaps the most complex and expensive structural parts of the aircraft.

So Lockheed must have been very worried a year ago when Alcoa decided to shut down the massive, 50,000-ton hydraulic press -- a Cold War industrial monument -- rather than invest $68 million to fix a crack in the foundation. The shutdown threat spread concerns far beyond the F-35 program. It would have added more devastation to the Cleveland economy, and eliminated one of the USA's most important domestic manufacturing capabilities.

Happily, that situation now appears resolved. Thanks to massive state and local tax subsidies, and the long-term commitment of the F-35 full-rate production, Aloca has decided to repair the famed press.

Link includes a .pdf about this 50,000t hydraulic press, including interesting historical background on its development - particularly that German capabilities in WW2 in this area exceeded that of the USA, so they made development of equivalents a top priority, with further impetus to the program from the fact that the Soviets seized the best one (a 30,000t press) at the end of WW2.

To Stas, I ask if he knows what the best hydraulic press the Russians currently have?

[K. A. Pital]

In the 1950s the USSR developed powerful hydraulic presses (probably based on captured German tech, though I don't know for sure). The Ural factory produced 2 hydraulic presses of 294MN (~30000 ton-force). In 1960, the Novokramatorskiy machine factory (NKMZ) produced a series of unique, at that time most powerful hydraulic presses of 735-750 MN (~75000 ton-force) for Samara and Verkhnesaldinsk metal factories (both active). Electric slag welding was used to create the presses.

The USSR was so advanced in that tech, so that France ordered a 637 MN (~65000 ton-force) press from the USSR's NKMZ. The construction was borrowed from the 735 MN presses, but modernized for added robustness. That press is likewise still active.

The world record (if I'm not mistaken) goes to the 1986 German hydraulic press at the BMW plant in Munich, capable of 106000 ton-force.

The two US Cold War presses are 450 MN. The USA worked on a 2000 MN super-press, but abandoned that project as infeasible or too costly. Russia's Uralmash is currently developing a 500 MN press.

[Sea Skimmer]

I thought they mothballed that thing a while ago.

But anyway, a pretty large number of 30-50,000 ton presses used to exist in the industrialized world because they were necessary for making certain kinds of armored plates. Even poor old Japan had a 50,000 ton one built locally until the US forced them to dismantle it in 1945. So it’s doubtful that Russia had any need to actually use captured technology. As far as I can tell the main different between the armor plate presses and the postwar aircraft ones are the latter could cycle more quickly, and the former are not normally meant to work with closed dies. That meant making aircraft parts wasn't gonna happen, but it was fine for squishing a giant armor plate that could be cropped off latter.