Forum: General F-35 Forum

Amazing how something so old school remains productive and relevant. This monster press should help iron out the bugs in the F-35 bulkhead.

Quote:

APPROACHING ALCOA’S 50,000-TON forging press feels a bit like approaching an alp: it starts out incomprehensibly huge and keeps getting incomprehensibly huger. From a distance, the thing dominates the horizon of the hangar-like Cleveland Works facility; as you get nearer, catching glimpses through forests of girders and around cliffs of firebrick, it begins to dominate the air above. But even as you stand at its foot, being told that the eight steel bolts anchoring it are 40 inches thick, calculating in your head that that makes them 10 feet around—even then it’s still a bit out of reach. Only when you climb it, peer down from its sixth-floor summit, and realize that the puny machine next to it is, in fact, its 35,000-ton brother—well, then you finally appreciate the size of the thing. It’s big.

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Full article: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... nt/308886/

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"The bugs" that you allude to had nothing to do with the forgings. But the 50K ton press will produce bulkhead forgings quicker and at less cost.

ALCOA's Cleveland facility produces 15 bulkhead forgings for F-35 -- iirc, 5 for the 'A', 6 for the 'B', and 4 for the 'C'.

One of these days they will "print" bulkheads.

There is a fair discussion of forgings vs other alternatives at the link that Popcorn provides.

The forging technology of the 50K ton press is fundamentally the same that we brought from Germany after WWII, albeit with some modern updates. 'Old school' remains relevant enough that the Chinese are building two similar size press machines for their own industries.

No I didn't check the math but I still love this quote for scale anyway, "If the logistics could somehow be worked out, the Fifty could bench-press the battleship Iowa, with 860 tons to spare." That's the America I grew up with living in the Rustbelt.

I just think it's remarkable much of what's flying today, commercial and military, can trace some part of their lineage back to this machine..and to think that it will still be stamping out parts for who knows what well past it's 100th bday.

Forum: General F-35 Forum

Iron giant