How about a lathe !!

check these pics out, these machines were used to build HUGE piston engine's for ship's in and around WW2.

 

it's what we do. when you take the politicians out of it.

 

Very cool ... back in the day when Americans really knew how to manufacture stuff.

 

thanks for the pics, love old machines, my boss thinks i`m crazy, we have an old break and shear that gotta be wwii era and a power hammer and i`m just fascinated with them, i know more about them than he does, he asks why, i say, i`m just into them......thanks for the pics......that torch is amazing cutting through like 12 inches......crap!

 

WOW-No eye protection

Love that last pic of the early CNC cutter.

Oldmics

 

awesome pix! im facinated with the old machinery also. thanks for the pix

 

google, shipsnostalgia.com.........there is tons of pictures like these.....

 

the good old days when we were at the top of manufacturing. i still use a huge drop recip saw from wwii, call her big blue. that baby will cut through 10inchs of anything you put on the cutting deck!

 

a couple more.......

 

These pictures are incredible! How was that cnc controlled?

 

cnc controlled.......lol........i didn`t catch that.........its not....the man is tracing a pattern on the table.......

 

If you have Netflix check out "Azorian: The Raising of the K-129" The making of the ship is crazy especially the roller bearings.

I just lost out (only by a few hours) on a South Bend lathe for $400 on craigslist.

My work has about a dozen of these old punches and I get the pleasure of fixing, adjusting and or rebuilding them.

 

there was no CNC back then it was all manual machining techniques, a lost art nowadays...

oh yeah im stationed on a LHD class ship and you should see the back up deisel's they have on board about 25ft long and 14ft high. absolutly amazing!

 

This is a Template Profile Cutting machine. A 1:1 template is made which is seen here on the layout table, a magnetised gear driven adjustable speed roller then rolls around the template. Allowance must be made for the width of the cut, as the roller moves around the template a universal arm holding the cutting tip moves in sync with the roller.

The shape shown here is really simple, cutting square corners... that's another thing.

 

Lead High School in Lead, South Dakota had a big Machine shop. The school sold all of the machine shop tools at an auction and converted the machine shop into an art room. You could take two years of machine shop class. Frank Brust and Ivan Hovland were the teachers. After graduation, the students could get a job any where and a lot of them stuck with the trade. The reason for the machine shop class was the Homestake Gold Mine had a foundry, pattern shop and a large machine shop. They were training future workers for the mine. The wood working shop was huge too.

I do not know the numbers but a lot of people made a good living from their training in Lead High Schools shop classes. They offered Classes at night in wood working, machine shop, welding, mechanical and architectural drawing.

I do not know of any artist that is making a living from the art class. It was a shame to see this part of the education system destroyed.

I would take night classes when I was home working in the area.

 

art class = the libralization of schools, oops, did i say that?

 

123, I had the opportunity to repair and rebuild a shit load of those style presses in the early '90s when Holcam had a big fire. I worked for industrial repair service in Kent back then. It is a shame to see all the metal shop classes going away! As a machinist who runs manual machines, there is not many of us left and even fewer coming up!

 

I think they call this progress.

 

Out on Mare Island they had some way bigger than that first one that were verticle as opposed to hosizontal. They used then to make screw shafts.

 

I'll bet several of those lathes from the second picture are still going. And that torch is tracing a full size pattern.

 

Check out the size of the cuttings under that first big lathe. Anybody need a long spring?

GREAT PICS!!

 

we still use them babys. that aint the biggest either.

 

God these kinds of images are truly mindblowing, especially for me. What an era!

 

There are several companies here in Texas still using machines of that size and larger. I have worked for them and purchased machining services from others. And yes, some of the lathes were of WW2 vintage and still going strong.

 

That, and this:

Try finding a skilled machinist that will go through the bunk of getting/keeping a teaching license only to work in a school for a teacher's salary. An individual would make much more in the private sector. Keep in mind, not all states, esp. SD, pay teachers the large sums you hear about in the news.

Oh yeah, you enjoy teaching machinist skills all day for a couple of years. Then the budget gets pinched and you find yourself teaching one or two periods of basic math to 16-18 year old mouth breathers who come sauntering in with their pants hanging down to their knees and their eyes permanently bloodshot. What fun!

Okay, I will go take my pill now.

 

Very big Crankshaft lathe. Can you count how many Cylinders there would be ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taMV8CcszbE&feature=relmfu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxA6DsbN94g&feature=relmfu

 

I've worked on all kinds of machines in my time, but never one as big as that first one with the piston...and yeah no body has any safty glasses on...yikes! Course when the chips are the size of coil springs you'd be be hard pressed to get that in your eye. It looks like that lathe would swallow you up in nothing flat!

 

Had to chuckle when I read the first post and saw the pictures, as there are shops still actively using those same machines today! I retired last fall, but several of my customers were machine shops, and a couple of them are still using old Cinncinnati and Monarch lathes that are big old monsters from well before WWII.
The nice thing about those old lathes and equipment is that they were so soild they could be rebuilt forever, and even though parts are impossible to find, they can usually be built in house on other equally old machinery!
I've rebuilt those old lathes (electrically) for years and learned a lot about the mechanics on them from the guy who run them. Most of those guys have talents that are just not found in today's machine operator, who merely sets up a CNC and changes tooling and material.
It's a dying art to run a machine like that, and unfortunately many of those machines have gone to the scrapyards for scrap metal in recent years.

 

"Those were the days my friend. I thought they'd never end. ...but they did."

 

I work at a Naval Shipyard, (over 28 years) when I started they had large machinery like this . We had a wood lathe that ran from an overhead motor with a long leather belt.When you were turning, your elbow would ,on occasion, rub the belt. Crazy! now the largest machine in the Shipwrights shop is a CNC router. The young fellow that operates it knows his stuff and turns out an amazing amount of work. I learned hand skills and by todays standards, old technology. Funny to become somewhat redundant in your career!