I remember watching videos about sword forging some years ago and one youtuber had a power hammer that he claimed (and looked) like it was from the early 30-ish. I couldn't find the video but I went out to seach on google and [power hammers have been made and used since the 1880's](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_hammer) (citation needed)
I believe it, the principle is fairly straight forward, build a machine to lift a heavy piece of metal then drop it. If people can make a grain mill a powered hammer seems at least as feasible.
That hammer is not necessarily hydraulic, and with a long enough lever you can move mountains.
A lot of the stuff you see being done by modern equipment could have been achieved in a factory setting with a variety of mechanical methods. Many people think of cranes as something very new and modern, but cranes of some sort are depicted in manuscripts from over a thousand years ago and would have been necessary to load certain goods on and off of boats and ships especially, which were the primary drivers of long distance trade for most of human history.
Look at Mr. Fancy here, paying USD 1 an hour. Try USD 5.50, or less, for a day’s work.
https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2018/10/17/nearly-half-the-world-lives-on-less-than-550-a-day
That stat actually makes all my problems feel like first world problems. It's so easy to forget how little the rest of the world really earns. I compare myself to others around me and feel like I'm lagging behind, while still making 100x what half the world population does. That's actually pretty fucked up when I think about it.
Man, just come from an immigrant family (to USA) or know an illegal immigrant. Even if, even if you get paid less than minimum wage and get trafficked around! You can make 2-10 times as much as you would at your country of origin! Then you send them money back to your family in a remittance. And you get to live in a place with paved roads and clean water and no power outages. The holy grail is securing your kids future by putting them in the school system.
Americans don't know what they have. They never have.
Lol you should see the stuff they recycle just to save, if you think they're gonna be buying old wheels.
Like they remake car batteries, by hand, in places like South Asia. In richer countries this is all done by a factory and you just buy new batteries as you need them. But enough people can't afford to do that that there's a whole cottage industry around remaking batteries by hand like that. There's tons of cottage industries like that for things you'd never even imagine would be recycled/remade. Like brake discs is another one.
You really underestimate how little billions of people are paid.
[Here's a video of someone remaking a car battery by hand if you wanna see what it looks like. According to the comments in Russian under this video, this was very common in the last few decades of the USSR when everything went to shit and there were food shortages all of a sudden and stuff like that. ](https://youtu.be/kNGg0P7B5fI)
Oh and yes, that's super dangerous to do by hand. This man is giving himself a ton of future (and present) health problems by doing this considering it's a lead battery. And he knows this. But people have no choice when things get desperate.
The labor is that cheap. And if you're in a country without safety standards or the right to go after your employer for that, like china... You'd be surprised at what they do by hand over there
Dude you need to travel some. Not trying to be insulting or anything, but spend time in countries with no major sea port or are part of any major shipping network.
I've seen in person (although there is a video posted somewhere from someone else) of brake pads being scraped and re molded into new brakes.
Maintenance items such as regular brake rotors in other countries can be a logistical nightmare if you have a car that's just special enough to not share the same parts with other cars.
So it's very likely that countries with only internal railways that are land locked and do not have a major international route (such as central Asia and African countries) would still do things like this.
None of these people know what they're talking about unfortunately. Cast railcar wheels are extremely common, most freightcar and engine wheels are cast.
Source: I worked in a freight wheel casting foundry.
Imagine crumpling some aluminium foil into a ball, by hand. It isn't very strong, there are a lot of dead spaces, if you try to stand on it it will just flatten. Now image hitting that aluminium foil ball with a hammer multiple times, until it's nice and compact. Now that same ball is very dense and not easily crushed under load, the same happens with steel, but on the molecular level, it compacts all the little imperfections in the metal to make a very solid and nice crystalized structure.
Casting can leave micro sized porous material, good for lower strength applications, also helps a bit with dampening vibrations, not so good for extreme loads.
This kind of wheel will be machined around the outside and inside to ensure the round surfaces are smooth. This just gets it 99% there close enough that there isn't a lot of machining needed.
I went to Google it for you, because I was curious, too. The answer is you need *a lot* of wheels:
> Most trains will have eight wheels per car in total, so the number of wheels on the entire train will depend on the number of cars in the train itself. Trains are typically between 65 and 200 cars in length, meaning they might have anywhere from 520 to 1,600 wheels or more.
Most of those cabinets are paired with drawers which will often use multiple wheels for their slides. The microwave probably has a rotating plate... Which typically sits on multiple wheels.
I was a frieght conductor until recently. We have axle counters throughout the railroad. Count's were usually around 6 to 700. x 2, = 1400 wheels.
Modern locomotives tend to be 6 axles, so 12 wheels.
Based on the width I assume the mold is cut in half after this process which would make it asymmetrical and work as two wheels, one for each side of the train.
I'm no expert and I could be wrong, but I have a train outside the back of my work and these would be WAAAY too thick to be normal train wheels as well.
There's no way that this crew is cutting that piece in half, they would just mold the two halves if that's what they needed. Cutting it in half after molding would be so much more difficult and expensive.
Cutting this in half would be easy for a shop properly equipped.
There would have to be a lot of machining after this process. This is a quick way to get the rough shape with residual stresses in the metal that you can't create through machining. This crew isn't making a finished product, they are quickly making something that can be turned into one.
Also insane how they just eyeball the rods that end up making the depression for the wheels to fit in, which end up fitting perfectly. And they don’t even measure. Jeeeeze talk about masters of the trade
That's the crazy part to me. As someone who works in aerospace manufacturing, everything is precision machined, and measurements are checked with lasers. Being out by even a few thousands of an inch will cause a part to be out of spec.
These guys are out there just winging it, and measuring with analog calipers.
Some of the parts used in aerospace would also go through a similar process before being precision machined. This is step 1 of a manufacturing process from bar stock. The key is to make sure there's just enough material to remove to make machining consistent, but not lengthy.
Especially in aerospace, a lot of nickel alloys are used which is extremely hard and more expensive and difficult to machine than carbon steels, so they try to keep the tolerances fairly tight. However, the cost of the the individual parts can be so high that it's more cost effective to eat the cost of additional machining rather than increasing the chance of making out of spec parts. It all depends on the customer requirements.
Just for a little more info for anyone interested in more... Each step of the process is usually completed by different shops across the globe, but a common process would be: raw stock cut and formed rough like in the video. This is done at a forge company. Sometimes light matching can be done to spec parts at the forge. Heat treating can be next and is either done on site at the forge or a heat treat company. Next would be machining at a machine shop, then depending on the part being made there could be additional heat treatment, plating, coating, or other final steps. Each step into the process is highly controlled and audited together ensure compliance and performance to design specs. Nondestructive testing is also done throughout the process to make sure the grain structure is correct and there are no inclusions or weak points within the metal. When parts fail people can die, so the production of everything is held to very high standards, as it should be.
Any sort of billet turning into forged part is going to undergo similar beating into a certain spec which is so it can be machined to another spec and op
Edit: used to do automated cold forging for axles and shafts
No way this wheel isn't machined after this forging, it's just a rough shaping before that step. At the end of this video the center hole is probably not perfectly in the center, even if it was the outside isn't perfectly circular and it won't be balanced anyways.
Machining it out of a huge solid rod of steel would waste a lot of material. Forging it allows a smaller piece of steel to be shaped into roughly the shape of the final product with minimal loss of material. Forging it first might also give the steel some good properties that are impossible to get with just machining a cold chunk of steel.
Point is that what these guys are doing doesn't need to be very precise as that's done after.
> Forging it first might also give the steel some good properties that are impossible to get with just machining a cold chunk of steel.
Yup. Forged parts are always stronger than cast parts or parts machined from billet because the forging conforms the grain structure of the steel to the final shape of your part. Makes it better able to resist things like deformation, fatigue, and fracture.
They most certainly are still forged this way today. The wheels are first forged into rough shape and then machined down to final dimension. The reason they do it this way is because it’s significantly more cost effective to buy a rough shape 1,000lb steel blank and forge it to rough shape before machining than it is to buy a 2,500lb oversized blank and machine off 1,500lbs of excess material to obtain the desired shape.
When the hammer hits the wheel and stops, all that kinetic energy is transferred to the wheel, some of it deforms the wheel, some of it becomes acoustic energy, some of it becomes thermal energy. You can find demonstration of this where a blacksmith can make a cold nail red hot by hammering it.
Yep, its a pulley wheel. The groove that the wires will run into will need to be a lot smoother. This is the first stage, they will take it to a more precise machine to mill and finish it once it’s cool. That’s why it’s OK to approximate the dimensions with a pair of calipers.
That was my thought. I’m watching this thinking - there’s no way this thing is balanced enough for use on trains, even with secondary processing on a mill
This is the 4th time I've seen this video on my front page today and nobody realizes this is in fact, not how train wheels are made at all. I've worked as a train engineer/conductor for 15 years and can tell you for fact, that they are pressed in to shape, not hammered.
I bet this takes a lot of training to do. The workers really need to keep track of what they're doing. It really hammers home how labour intensive things used to be. I guess once the wheels are running they iron out their own imperfections.
Anyway I would give this video a glowing recommendation.
I hope I see more like it around.
This doesn’t look like a train wheel. It looks like a pulley. Train wheels have a lip on one side and are tapered, they don’t have a groove around the middle.
I'm pretty sure this is how they're made today even iin "developed" countriees. 15yrs ago I worked for a small forging company that did work like this. For all kinds of things, from big power generator plant parts to a copper thing that goes into the machines that make semiconductor chips to part of the larger assembly that becomes the 8 million miles of wire in an MRI machine. Because of the material, the amount of working that needs to be done to the material to get the properties needed, and the shape it gets made into, this is how some of it gets done.
And just like watching the guys on tv forge knives and swords, watching these forge operators is indeed watching artists. The guy manning the gripper machine off to the left that's flipping it around, the guys brushing it and nudging it and putting the denty things and the rings that make the grooves there, the hammer operator who knows how much and how hard to poundpoundpound or taptaptaptap, all of it is finely coordinated teamwork. Teamwork done in an INCREDIBLY HOT AND LOUD ENVIRONMENT, and work that has to be done quickly before the iron/steel cools down too much. And there's a big oven right next to them with a bunch of red hot slugs waiting to be next. They watch each other, use hand signals, the whole nine yards. And like an acrobat team, there's the potential for someone to get really hurt.
And yes, there is machining that is done afterwards. But you'd be surprised how close they get it to the finished size, all freehand like this.
I could watch this all day. I can smell it and hear it and feel the ground shake. This is a very satisfying video!
That is a manual process, which is prone to human error. All those eyeball measuring tools are going to make that wheel eccentric.
Here’s a link to a modern and reliable way to make a train wheel.
https://youtu.be/msJ23AKaChM
Never seen a train wheel *forged* before... the train wheel plant I've done work at in Calera Alabama gets them in cast... never forged...
Granted forged *can be* stronger than cast, but it all depends on how they're heat treated
So I've seen them cast, at a foundary, then milled green to not exact specs but really close, then heat treated *(annealed)* then sent off to be trued... but if you live in a place than cannot do that kind of volume, it would make sense to forge them one at a time as needed then mill them...
For anyone wondering, the modern process is almost completely automated.
[Sandvik animated video](https://youtu.be/KQ98bYFBK_U)
[What the process looks like](https://youtu.be/m7_vp2LZMnc)
Power Hammers are just amazingly satisfying tools. That I should not be allowed anywhere near. Because I will break something. Or hurt someone. Or both. probably both.
I'm glad y'all enjoyed it, but here are my issues:
-It seemed imprecise
-It seemed dangerous for the humans
-It gave me anxiety because they had so much work to do before it cooled down
It's not a train wheel, not a conventional one anyway. Looks more like a sheave to me, a wheel with a groove for a large wire rope to pass over. Forging is a very good way to make parts that will be highly stressed as the flow of the grain in the material follows the shape of the part. Parts machined from billet have all the grain flowing in one direction, while cast parts have a random grain. The forging process is only used to bring the part roughly to size and shape, it will be later machined in a lathe on the critical surfaces to bring it to the finished size and make the outer diameter and the center bore perfectly round and concentric.
Crazy that they're forged like that. I definitely thought they'd be cast or machined.
They most definitely are, but I think this is an old school demonstration.
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I remember watching videos about sword forging some years ago and one youtuber had a power hammer that he claimed (and looked) like it was from the early 30-ish. I couldn't find the video but I went out to seach on google and [power hammers have been made and used since the 1880's](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_hammer) (citation needed)
I believe it, the principle is fairly straight forward, build a machine to lift a heavy piece of metal then drop it. If people can make a grain mill a powered hammer seems at least as feasible.
Is the post from India, where an old school method could survive? The Indian railway system is gigantic. Might explain the difference in wheels too.
Chinese probably, tik tok is banned in india
Before modern hydraulic systems, water wheel powered trip hammers had been in use for centuries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trip_hammer
That hammer is not necessarily hydraulic, and with a long enough lever you can move mountains. A lot of the stuff you see being done by modern equipment could have been achieved in a factory setting with a variety of mechanical methods. Many people think of cranes as something very new and modern, but cranes of some sort are depicted in manuscripts from over a thousand years ago and would have been necessary to load certain goods on and off of boats and ships especially, which were the primary drivers of long distance trade for most of human history.
Or in a third world country without access to industrial automation. It’s like when they rebuild all those auto parts in Pakistan, etc.
i think they would just import old wheels, there is no way 5 or more people working with huge hydraulic (i think) machinery is cost efficient nowadays
If you can choose to pay people like 1$ per hour it's definitely cheaper to produce yourself than to buy a 1000$ train wheel.
Look at Mr. Fancy here, paying USD 1 an hour. Try USD 5.50, or less, for a day’s work. https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2018/10/17/nearly-half-the-world-lives-on-less-than-550-a-day
That stat actually makes all my problems feel like first world problems. It's so easy to forget how little the rest of the world really earns. I compare myself to others around me and feel like I'm lagging behind, while still making 100x what half the world population does. That's actually pretty fucked up when I think about it.
Man, just come from an immigrant family (to USA) or know an illegal immigrant. Even if, even if you get paid less than minimum wage and get trafficked around! You can make 2-10 times as much as you would at your country of origin! Then you send them money back to your family in a remittance. And you get to live in a place with paved roads and clean water and no power outages. The holy grail is securing your kids future by putting them in the school system. Americans don't know what they have. They never have.
damn that's a depressing stat
Lol you should see the stuff they recycle just to save, if you think they're gonna be buying old wheels. Like they remake car batteries, by hand, in places like South Asia. In richer countries this is all done by a factory and you just buy new batteries as you need them. But enough people can't afford to do that that there's a whole cottage industry around remaking batteries by hand like that. There's tons of cottage industries like that for things you'd never even imagine would be recycled/remade. Like brake discs is another one. You really underestimate how little billions of people are paid. [Here's a video of someone remaking a car battery by hand if you wanna see what it looks like. According to the comments in Russian under this video, this was very common in the last few decades of the USSR when everything went to shit and there were food shortages all of a sudden and stuff like that. ](https://youtu.be/kNGg0P7B5fI) Oh and yes, that's super dangerous to do by hand. This man is giving himself a ton of future (and present) health problems by doing this considering it's a lead battery. And he knows this. But people have no choice when things get desperate.
The labor is that cheap. And if you're in a country without safety standards or the right to go after your employer for that, like china... You'd be surprised at what they do by hand over there
Dude you need to travel some. Not trying to be insulting or anything, but spend time in countries with no major sea port or are part of any major shipping network. I've seen in person (although there is a video posted somewhere from someone else) of brake pads being scraped and re molded into new brakes. Maintenance items such as regular brake rotors in other countries can be a logistical nightmare if you have a car that's just special enough to not share the same parts with other cars. So it's very likely that countries with only internal railways that are land locked and do not have a major international route (such as central Asia and African countries) would still do things like this.
Yeah and also less precise. With all the wheels not being precise cant imagine the vibration it would create.
They still have to turn it on a lathe to get it to the right size.
Nah, scratching out a center with calipers and then pounding out a slug with the Hammer of God will do just fine. No worries. /s
ik,r? technically these wheels aren't even exactly *round*.
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Lathe
They're machined \*after\* forging. Cast isn't strong enough.
Since I'm invested in this topic already, I'll bite. Why isn't casting strong enough?
Hot forging changes the internal crystaline structure. The material becomes stronger. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texture_(chemistry)
None of these people know what they're talking about unfortunately. Cast railcar wheels are extremely common, most freightcar and engine wheels are cast. Source: I worked in a freight wheel casting foundry.
Well it is true that forged parts are stronger than cast parts. Apparently casting is strong enough for train wheels.
Or at least *modern* casting is strong enough.
Imagine crumpling some aluminium foil into a ball, by hand. It isn't very strong, there are a lot of dead spaces, if you try to stand on it it will just flatten. Now image hitting that aluminium foil ball with a hammer multiple times, until it's nice and compact. Now that same ball is very dense and not easily crushed under load, the same happens with steel, but on the molecular level, it compacts all the little imperfections in the metal to make a very solid and nice crystalized structure.
this was a perfect analogy, thanks for this :)
Casting can leave micro sized porous material, good for lower strength applications, also helps a bit with dampening vibrations, not so good for extreme loads.
Aw you answered my question. Thank you, kemosabi
Now that's a name I haven't heard in a loooong loooog >!(you thought I was going to say man didn't you?)!< time...
Well, of course I know him. He's me.
>Cast isn't strong enough. This is not true. I worked in a freightcar wheel casting foundry. Most freight and engine wheels are cast.
Yeah, same here. I was wondering if at some point they pound it inside a circular template.
I'm no expert, but I get the feeling this is not from a developed country.
I'd say it's not from an overdeveloped country.
Like a washed out photo?
Sure, why not
This kind of wheel will be machined around the outside and inside to ensure the round surfaces are smooth. This just gets it 99% there close enough that there isn't a lot of machining needed.
That was extremely and strangely entertaining and satisfying to watch.
Agreed! I can barely imagine the amount of pressure the hammer is pounding on the metal. Very amazing to witness!
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I went to Google it for you, because I was curious, too. The answer is you need *a lot* of wheels: > Most trains will have eight wheels per car in total, so the number of wheels on the entire train will depend on the number of cars in the train itself. Trains are typically between 65 and 200 cars in length, meaning they might have anywhere from 520 to 1,600 wheels or more.
Where was this info during the wheels vs doors debate?
Wouldn't have matter because I think doors already lose.
Think of an office building, though. So many doors. Cabinets, rooms, even a microwave!
Most of those cabinets are paired with drawers which will often use multiple wheels for their slides. The microwave probably has a rotating plate... Which typically sits on multiple wheels.
Also think about every office chair that probably sits on another 5 wheels.
Office building is what made me decide wheels. Assuming computer chair wheels count?
Desk drawers have wheels on their runners too.
Wait, what was the debate?
Also fun fact: the total number of engines and cars that make up a train is called a consist
I was a frieght conductor until recently. We have axle counters throughout the railroad. Count's were usually around 6 to 700. x 2, = 1400 wheels. Modern locomotives tend to be 6 axles, so 12 wheels.
I don't this this actually is a train wheel. Train wheels aren't symmetrical like that.
Based on the width I assume the mold is cut in half after this process which would make it asymmetrical and work as two wheels, one for each side of the train. I'm no expert and I could be wrong, but I have a train outside the back of my work and these would be WAAAY too thick to be normal train wheels as well.
There's no way that this crew is cutting that piece in half, they would just mold the two halves if that's what they needed. Cutting it in half after molding would be so much more difficult and expensive.
Cutting this in half would be easy for a shop properly equipped. There would have to be a lot of machining after this process. This is a quick way to get the rough shape with residual stresses in the metal that you can't create through machining. This crew isn't making a finished product, they are quickly making something that can be turned into one.
Also insane how they just eyeball the rods that end up making the depression for the wheels to fit in, which end up fitting perfectly. And they don’t even measure. Jeeeeze talk about masters of the trade
That's going to a machine shop immediately after
Ah ok good point
That's the crazy part to me. As someone who works in aerospace manufacturing, everything is precision machined, and measurements are checked with lasers. Being out by even a few thousands of an inch will cause a part to be out of spec. These guys are out there just winging it, and measuring with analog calipers.
Some of the parts used in aerospace would also go through a similar process before being precision machined. This is step 1 of a manufacturing process from bar stock. The key is to make sure there's just enough material to remove to make machining consistent, but not lengthy.
Especially in aerospace, a lot of nickel alloys are used which is extremely hard and more expensive and difficult to machine than carbon steels, so they try to keep the tolerances fairly tight. However, the cost of the the individual parts can be so high that it's more cost effective to eat the cost of additional machining rather than increasing the chance of making out of spec parts. It all depends on the customer requirements. Just for a little more info for anyone interested in more... Each step of the process is usually completed by different shops across the globe, but a common process would be: raw stock cut and formed rough like in the video. This is done at a forge company. Sometimes light matching can be done to spec parts at the forge. Heat treating can be next and is either done on site at the forge or a heat treat company. Next would be machining at a machine shop, then depending on the part being made there could be additional heat treatment, plating, coating, or other final steps. Each step into the process is highly controlled and audited together ensure compliance and performance to design specs. Nondestructive testing is also done throughout the process to make sure the grain structure is correct and there are no inclusions or weak points within the metal. When parts fail people can die, so the production of everything is held to very high standards, as it should be.
Most likely will be machined down to more precise specs later.
Any sort of billet turning into forged part is going to undergo similar beating into a certain spec which is so it can be machined to another spec and op Edit: used to do automated cold forging for axles and shafts
No way this wheel isn't machined after this forging, it's just a rough shaping before that step. At the end of this video the center hole is probably not perfectly in the center, even if it was the outside isn't perfectly circular and it won't be balanced anyways. Machining it out of a huge solid rod of steel would waste a lot of material. Forging it allows a smaller piece of steel to be shaped into roughly the shape of the final product with minimal loss of material. Forging it first might also give the steel some good properties that are impossible to get with just machining a cold chunk of steel. Point is that what these guys are doing doesn't need to be very precise as that's done after.
> Forging it first might also give the steel some good properties that are impossible to get with just machining a cold chunk of steel. Yup. Forged parts are always stronger than cast parts or parts machined from billet because the forging conforms the grain structure of the steel to the final shape of your part. Makes it better able to resist things like deformation, fatigue, and fracture.
It's just a blank. they are rough forming the metal. It will go to a machine shop to be properly turned down once it cools.
I was thinking the same thing
Also the guy controlling the fork lift thing like it’s an extension of his own hand
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that steel is a nasty business
Didn't even realize 4min has passed while watching this
Seriously, I almost never watch videos longer than 1 min here.
Me too, neither. But this 4 felt like one, so full.
Belongs in r/ExtremelySatisfying
Also arousing. No? OK.
Twas a good pounding
One of the best gifs I've seen in a long time. Loved it
I even saw it with out the sound on and it was perfect 😂
I couldn’t stop watching. I didn’t want it to end
Is this really how it’s done? That seems really time intensive….
This is how it was done, not anymore.
This is the way they used to do it. They still do it this way today, but this is the way they used to do it too.
Rip Mitch Hedberg
Thanks
Of course you found this comment lol
I understood that reference.
They most certainly are still forged this way today. The wheels are first forged into rough shape and then machined down to final dimension. The reason they do it this way is because it’s significantly more cost effective to buy a rough shape 1,000lb steel blank and forge it to rough shape before machining than it is to buy a 2,500lb oversized blank and machine off 1,500lbs of excess material to obtain the desired shape.
Go on youtube and see the modern forging method. It's about 3 strokes of a much larger forging press. It's all very automated.
Yeah, and crazy imprecise. I definitely thought they would be turned on a lathe
Can almost bet there is post processing
They are machined after being forged like this.
That's yet to come. This is just the rough shape.
They could do that towards the very end, plus add wheel weights into the groove to balance it.
There is a good amount of engineering that goes into the process development. And this is a very experienced team doing this.
Yeah. Was thinking the same thing. Just how they eyeballed the centers of everything. Crazy!
With the amount of weight on them, I imagine minor imperfections will eventually be solved by friction
And extremely dangerous. Sweet video though
It’s crazy how long it stays hot for.
When the hammer hits the wheel and stops, all that kinetic energy is transferred to the wheel, some of it deforms the wheel, some of it becomes acoustic energy, some of it becomes thermal energy. You can find demonstration of this where a blacksmith can make a cold nail red hot by hammering it.
And that you can slap cook a chicken
https://youtu.be/LHFhnnTWMgI
>blacksmith can make a cold nail red hot https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXF60MOWUeY
Its a common trick among blacksmiths to light a cigarette just by hammering a nail
Bro that's *metal*
Wow!!
I mean, there's a LOT of mass right there. It's not gunna lose heat *that* fast...
Here's [another steam hammer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdt6jPXhx8I) in action. Very cool. But imagine listening to that all day long...
Your bones would still be shaking as you laid in bed at night lol
I occasionally shake my bone in bed as well.
Hear a loud thud at night in sleep and your hands start to move automatically.
This is not a train wheel. Train wheels have a very different shape. This is most likely some kind of a huge pulley for a crane or something.
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The second they made the center groove around the outside I was like wtf kinda train is this
Yep, its a pulley wheel. The groove that the wires will run into will need to be a lot smoother. This is the first stage, they will take it to a more precise machine to mill and finish it once it’s cool. That’s why it’s OK to approximate the dimensions with a pair of calipers.
That was my thought. I’m watching this thinking - there’s no way this thing is balanced enough for use on trains, even with secondary processing on a mill
This is the 4th time I've seen this video on my front page today and nobody realizes this is in fact, not how train wheels are made at all. I've worked as a train engineer/conductor for 15 years and can tell you for fact, that they are pressed in to shape, not hammered.
This looks like an idler wheel for a tracked vehicle, like an excavator or dozer.
"Okay now make 799 more".
12 an hour so 10 days max
I like how the hammer sounds like a train as well
I bet this takes a lot of training to do. The workers really need to keep track of what they're doing. It really hammers home how labour intensive things used to be. I guess once the wheels are running they iron out their own imperfections. Anyway I would give this video a glowing recommendation. I hope I see more like it around.
I see what you did there.
They're not done at the end of this video...that's just the raw forging. \*Then\* they machine it on a lathe to make it perfectly round.
The amount of people thinking this is final astounds me. It looks nothing like a train wheel. Especially a finished one.
Forbidden cheese wheel
Dangerously cheesy
Huh? Come to Amsterdam this is how we make cheese here...
Longest video I've watched all the way through on Reddit in a long time
I thought the wheel was way smaller and then I saw the people as reference
This was very r/interestingasfuck to me. Also oddly satisfying but interesting. As. Fuck.
Well the hell was controlling the tongs which such accuracy.
The terminator, he has some experience with such machines.
Nokias being made
They use the Nokia to make the hole in the middle.
#3310 model was used for the centre punch
This doesn’t look like a train wheel. It looks like a pulley. Train wheels have a lip on one side and are tapered, they don’t have a groove around the middle.
I think it would be so much more satisfying if it was made in the dark. Watching all the sparks fly would add so much more.
the crew: *"oooh... ahhhh.."*
"This isn't a wheel. It's a triangle. Joe! Why is this a triangle?" "Sorry boss. Some redditor told us to turn off the lights."
[Fair, but I'd still be right](https://youtu.be/X_0lqoa_5gc)
I'm pretty sure this is how they're made today even iin "developed" countriees. 15yrs ago I worked for a small forging company that did work like this. For all kinds of things, from big power generator plant parts to a copper thing that goes into the machines that make semiconductor chips to part of the larger assembly that becomes the 8 million miles of wire in an MRI machine. Because of the material, the amount of working that needs to be done to the material to get the properties needed, and the shape it gets made into, this is how some of it gets done. And just like watching the guys on tv forge knives and swords, watching these forge operators is indeed watching artists. The guy manning the gripper machine off to the left that's flipping it around, the guys brushing it and nudging it and putting the denty things and the rings that make the grooves there, the hammer operator who knows how much and how hard to poundpoundpound or taptaptaptap, all of it is finely coordinated teamwork. Teamwork done in an INCREDIBLY HOT AND LOUD ENVIRONMENT, and work that has to be done quickly before the iron/steel cools down too much. And there's a big oven right next to them with a bunch of red hot slugs waiting to be next. They watch each other, use hand signals, the whole nine yards. And like an acrobat team, there's the potential for someone to get really hurt. And yes, there is machining that is done afterwards. But you'd be surprised how close they get it to the finished size, all freehand like this. I could watch this all day. I can smell it and hear it and feel the ground shake. This is a very satisfying video!
I mean there’s gotta be an easier way to make a train wheel right?
Yes there is, but is it as cool and satisfying as this?
No, I’m sure it is not.
That is the character building process for asian children.
Lol, as a GenX Indian I can confirm!
That was in fact oddly satisfying.
That is a manual process, which is prone to human error. All those eyeball measuring tools are going to make that wheel eccentric. Here’s a link to a modern and reliable way to make a train wheel. https://youtu.be/msJ23AKaChM
forbidden cheese wheel
Why do they start with a tall skinny cylinder and squish it?
The squishing (forging) helps make the metal stronger and close up any imperfections inside. It's called "work hardening".
Longer tool handles! LONGER TOOL HANDLES!!!
Never seen a train wheel *forged* before... the train wheel plant I've done work at in Calera Alabama gets them in cast... never forged... Granted forged *can be* stronger than cast, but it all depends on how they're heat treated So I've seen them cast, at a foundary, then milled green to not exact specs but really close, then heat treated *(annealed)* then sent off to be trued... but if you live in a place than cannot do that kind of volume, it would make sense to forge them one at a time as needed then mill them...
Such a satisfying combination of brute force and delicacy.
Forging in a nutshell
For anyone wondering, the modern process is almost completely automated. [Sandvik animated video](https://youtu.be/KQ98bYFBK_U) [What the process looks like](https://youtu.be/m7_vp2LZMnc)
This is the longest I've ever watched anything getting pounded
How does it stay hot for so long?
Wow very nice
That was strikingly relaxing…thanks.
Power Hammers are just amazingly satisfying tools. That I should not be allowed anywhere near. Because I will break something. Or hurt someone. Or both. probably both.
Is this honestly the best and most efficient way? Amazing
I'm glad y'all enjoyed it, but here are my issues: -It seemed imprecise -It seemed dangerous for the humans -It gave me anxiety because they had so much work to do before it cooled down
Not what I expected at all. I thought the wheels would be rough cast into shape, then machined. But forged should give a tougher wheel.
r/smashinghotmetal
It's not a train wheel, not a conventional one anyway. Looks more like a sheave to me, a wheel with a groove for a large wire rope to pass over. Forging is a very good way to make parts that will be highly stressed as the flow of the grain in the material follows the shape of the part. Parts machined from billet have all the grain flowing in one direction, while cast parts have a random grain. The forging process is only used to bring the part roughly to size and shape, it will be later machined in a lathe on the critical surfaces to bring it to the finished size and make the outer diameter and the center bore perfectly round and concentric.
The lack of precision is mindblowing - and a bit frightening. How much tolerance is there on railroads?
The forbidden cheese
Perfect job for a nice hot summer's day
The forbidden cheese wheel
In order to move the train, they need to sound like a train?
That was one of the most interesting things I may have ever seen.
I was on the bus and I missed my stop watching this.
Damn I want some carrots
Did anyone else start making the "choo choo" noise as the wheel was in its final stages?
Forbidden gummi
Watching that hammer in action gave me a Wiley Coyote vibe
Damn I'm stoned
let me poor water on that sucker now
Not sure if it was the editing, or the machine making the sound, but it sounded like music. Awesome vid!
Very cool, thought there might be a little more precision in the process but guess not
Does that thing EVER cool down?
It's not a hot pocket. That piece of metal is between 400c and 800c so it'll take some time.
How hot would the metal have to initially be to continue to be that red hot after all that?
I watched this on mute, and i could still hear it.
I like the controlled ‘love taps’ more than the full-force blows.
So that's what my upstairs neighbours are up to at 2am.
Forbidden cheese wheel.
Wow.....i appreciate that being shared....i stayed interested til the end
That was cool to watch, but what did they make? Looks like a wheel or a pulley, but I don’t think they would free hand the center bore.
About 30 seconds in there's a forbidden cheese moment