Heavy Press Program

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A 45,500 ton forging press in use at Wyman-Gordon

The Heavy Press Program (German: Schwere-Presse-Programm) was an American industrial project that, at the endeavors of the United States Air Force , should lead to the development of the largest extrusion and forging presses in the world. The machines built expanded the capacities of the US defense industry for the production of structural parts for aviation from light metals such as aluminum and magnesium . The project began during the Cold War in 1950 and ended as early as 1957 after the completion of six extrusion and four forging presses with forming forces of up to 50,000 American tons (~ 45,400 metric tons). The cost of building the presses, eight of which are in use to date, was $ 279 million at the time. Larger presses can be found today in Japan, France, Russia and China.

history

Alcoa's 45,500 ton forging press

The idea of ​​building heavy extrusion and forging presses was fundamentally driven by experiences during the Second World War . With several large presses, the German Reich was able to produce components for Luftwaffe aircraft in large numbers. At the same time, more complex parts could be manufactured in one piece and no longer had to be laboriously joined from several individual parts by riveting. One of the largest forging machines with a force of almost 30,000 tons and blueprints for a 50,000 ton press fell victim to dismantling by the Soviets after the war . The USA could only win much smaller presses for itself, which were shipped quickly across the Atlantic. These circumstances created fears on the American side that they could be technologically behind the USSR and justified the development of their own designs of heavy presses.

The original plan was to build 17 presses, but the scope of the project was limited to ten in 1953.

A US Air Force Lieutenant General, KB Wolfe, was a driving force behind the development project.

Titanium structural parts for a McDonnell Douglas F-15 before and after processing by the 45,500-ton press at Alcoa

Built presses

Force
(metric tons)		 Press type Manufacturer Applied by place Start of operations
12,000 Extrusion Schloemann Alcoa Lafayette , Indiana 1953
45,500 Forging press Mesta Machinery Alcoa Air Force Plant 47 , Cleveland , Ohio May 5th 1955
31,800 Forging press United Engineering Alcoa Air Force Plant 47, Cleveland, Ohio 1955
7,300 Extrusion Loewy Hydropress Kaiser Aluminum Halethorpe , Maryland
7,300 Extrusion Loewy Hydropress Kaiser Aluminum Halethorpe, Maryland
7,300 Extrusion Loewy Hydropress Harvey Machine Co. Torrance , California
10,900 Extrusion Lombard Corporation Harvey Machine Co. Torrance, California August 1957
(scrapped 1990s)
45,500 Forging press Loewy Hydropress Wyman-Gordon Air Force Plant 63 , Grafton , Massachusetts October 1955
31,800 Forging press Loewy Hydropress Wyman-Gordon Air Force Plant 63, Grafton, Massachusetts February 1955
10,900 Extrusion Loewy Hydropress Curtiss-Wright Buffalo , New York

Honor

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers declared the 45,500-ton Alcoa and Wyman-Gordon presses to be historic engineering milestones in 1981 and 1983, adding them to their list of Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmarks .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Atlantic: Iron Giant , accessed February 4, 2019
  2. ^ Pearson, Drew (September 11, 1953), The Free Lance-Star: "Aircraft Presses Cut Back Here as Soviet Forges Ahead" , accessed February 4, 2019
  3. ↑ Blue, DD; Kurtz, HF (1956). "Aluminum": Minerals yearbook metals and minerals (except fuels) 1953. I. Bureau of Mines, United States Government Printing Office. pp. 143–163 , accessed February 4, 2019
  4. ↑ ASME: ALCOA 50,000-ton Hydraulic Forging Press , accessed February 4, 2019
  5. ↑ ASME: Wyman-Gordon 50,000-ton Hydraulic Forging Press , accessed February 4, 2019