Three throw crankshaft. Indian magic…..

[ZanParticipant @zan]

I hope this works. Worth a view.

 

direct link won’t work

You tube  and put this in search

Expert Cut a Crankshafts of Cruise Ship Into pieces and Made a Crankshaft for Ammonia Compressor

 

Allow me

 

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

‘ere we go …

https://youtu.be/-a_1RSID0QQ?feature=shared

MichaelG.

[ZanParticipant @zan]

Thanks for that Michael. I tried 4 different posts  then gave up and added the title!

 

I loved the crude marking out, centre punching for tail stock centre , big hammer tightening the ”pliers” . and the steam heat shields at the furnace

 

first time I’ve ever seen any machinis5 in this type of video wearing safety specs, but what about his feet!

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Feet? Oh, wasn’t he wearing his safety-sandals then?

 

Actually that is very impressive. They are working in awful conditions, apparently converting all sorts of scrap items into new things that presumably work very well.

I was puzzled how that bit of ship’s engine shaft became the compressor crankshaft, because having apparently put that cylindrical piece into Stores to cool from the cutting, we then went to forging a rectangular billet – unless in fact we’d missed a step forging it square from round.

The blacksmiths are one very skilled team – they seemed to work much more by gestures than calls from the leading smith, and everyone else knowing exactly what to do and when. The turner did not need put on much depth of cut, for the size of the work, to reach a cylindrical surface.

And all machined to calipers and rules, scribers and scribing-blocks – not a “verynear” or micrometer in sight. Nor, apparently, a drawing though I wondered if that factory makes enough of these ammonia-compressor crankshafts for the men to be working from memory.

Was that a locomotive boiler with a new-looking firebox in the background in one shot? Possibly powering the hammer.

 

[derek hall 1Participant @derekhall1]

Made me smile to see that after all that work, the component was dumped into the back of a truck to roll around and possibly fall out and be damaged.

[Harry WilkesParticipant @harrywilkes58467]

Hat’s off to those guy’s having worked in a steel works I know only to well the temperatures they are working with and in.

H

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Yes, I thought the Transport Department treated that brand-new crankshaft in a rather cavalier manner, though it had already suffered the indignity of being lifted using chains rather than webbing slings.

Having watched the video and taken careful note how to turn a crankshaft (how did he centre the “live” end in that big V-block vice on the faceplate?) it sort of led me as these things do into how to find the material….

…. to whit, the appalling conditions of the ship-breakers on the beach at Alang. Where life, it seems, is cheaper than the price of ship’s fittings or steel plate.

.

This though led me back to using the steel to make new things, before being treated like a child by Yew-Toob owner Google’s One-Ad-A-Minute department finally had me swinging from the ceiling.

Two things emerged.

One was some of the steel goes to a, I think local, rolling-mill that converts the narrow strips into hot-rolled bar.

The other is using chunks of the salvaged plate directly for new fabrications.

The video cited below shows building a replacement excavator bucket, apparently for a ‘Hitachi’ machine. Not much machining on these. It’s all plate, apart from the two pivot-pins and the bought-in teeth; flame-cut using a combination of a self-moving cutter on a special track, and a very steady hand indeed.

The man who led the work really does produce first-rate gas-cutting following chalked lines, and using a trammel pointed into a big centre-punch dot.

As for the setting-out “C” AD…… well, I like ‘Harvest Morn’ cereals but will never see their packets in quite the same light again.

The welded-on thicknessers for the pivots start as flame-cut “washers”, as one would expect (similar in our scales, could be sweated or silver-soldered on) though I’m not sure my books on using the lathe quite cover the finish-machining technique.

Oh, and don’t tell the HSE about the guard missing from the brake-press that formed the bucket’s main sheet, to a template bent from a length of rod.

[LathejackParticipant @lathejack]

I’ve been watching quite a lot of these type of videos recently from India or Pakistan,  they certainly are some of the most interesting videos on YouTube. 

Some of the most grimey workshops turning out all manner of components and machines. Water pumps, crankshafts, pistons, piston rings and cylinder liners..

The videos showing crankshafts being made are particularly interesting. Showing the moulding and casting process, through to the machining on a couple of old manual lathes using rather gnarly old tooling, drilling on very tired looking pillar drills and finally grinding on a relatively new looking crank grinder. The end product looks quite good, and yes, usually all done in bare feet or flip flops.

They produce three, four and even six cylinder cranks in this way. Perkins can be seen cast into the webbs of the new three cylinder cranks being made for the Perkins type AD3.152 engines, so that nice new tractor crankshaft from Vapourmatic or Agriline for a Massey Ferguson 35 or 135 could well have been produced in these workshops.

 

 

[Robert Atkinson 2Participant @robertatkinson2]

I did notice that despite the generally poor conditions and apparent state of the machines the turner was taking care of the important bits of the lathe. This included lubricating and covering the bed ways.

It’s possible that the transport at the end was to the grinding shop for finishing hence lack of precesion meaurement.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

I didn’t take the reference but found a video-compilation by someone calling himself “Hydraulic Hands”, that shows episodes in making some sort of rolling-machine and a number of large 3-shaft gearboxes (the drives for the rollers?

It didn’t seem right somehow, having waited for the gear-hobber to cut the helical-gear pairs, to see the finished parts being manipulated by chain-slings with no apparent worry about bruising the teeth. Or the large roller-bearing races, about a foot diameter, being driven onto to the shafts with a big hammer!

I did though learn how to make a sunk-key keyway by shaper – or planing-machine. Drill a hole at both ends of the channel. While making four big scallops (for rod-type keys?) on the end of another shaft was achieved by clamping the shaft to the top-slide mounting on a lathe’s non-slotted cross-slide, and cutting the scallop with a boring-bar.

Despite the bits we might wonder about, though, it is remarkable how these people manage to create high-quality the work in such grotty conditions with such old machine-tools.

Actually that video ends in an unusual way, by informal portraits of the craftsmen by way of credits.

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi Nigel Graham 2, re, building the excavator bucket, while there’s a missing guard on the break-press, I would be more concerned about the total lack of PPE and missing guards on the angle grinders, plus the excessive amount of heavy manhandling of some of the material, the template made from the rod, is not unusual in such fabrication, I’ve done it and so have many workmates, after all, it’s just another measuring aid, and the bucket is hardly a high end precision piece of kit. I can’t see the problem in reusing the steel from the ship, and I’ve never seen such buckets with those pivot thicknessers shrunk fitted or silver soldered on, they are always welded, but those that I’ve repaired, have had brass bushes fitted, and I have had to build up the holes with weld, when the shaft has worn through the brass bush, the holes were then finished to size, by a contractor with drum sanders in a die grinder, and he could get them dead on size and in line with each other.

Regards Nick.

[VicParticipant @vic]

I watched the video yesterday. I’ve never seen such large Blacksmiths tongs before!

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

And the award for Best Misreading Of A Post goes to…..

…. Nick Farr!

🙂

I never said excavator buckets are soldered together – simply observed our parallel methods in our scales (i.e. on models).

I did not criticise the factory for using salvaged plate directly – it seems an eminently sensible thing to do, and the ship steel is quite likely of similar grade to that used on the original bucket. Certainly just as good quality.

Nor did I criticise the use of a bent rod as a template – perfectly good practice – though I thought of those steel-fabricators when I breakfasted on ‘Harvest Morn’ cereal this morning!

I don’t know if the particular original bucket had bushed pin-holes. Perhaps not. I am sure that factory would have fitted them if so. After all, they fitted what were obviously the correct, purchased teeth.

Though I mentioned the missing brake-press guard I did not mention the lack of PPE because others have done that. In some of these videos the angle-grinders not only lack their wheel-guards but the users lack goggles.

All that heavy manhandling is necessitated by the rough working conditions and lack of equipment that could used there. They did use the excavator as a crane to move the bucket about.

All in all, I am impressed by what those craftsmen are able to achieve in such grotty working conditions.

 

++++

That is all present-day steel-fabricating but if you really want Ingenuity of the Ancients there is that famous Old Testament description of gilding the pillars in King Solomon’s Temple. Being one cubit diameter they were, we are told, therefore exactly three cubits circumference. Since the earliest translators included the Greeks that may have been as much from mystical perfectionism as not knowing “pi”, but I am sure the gilders would have done just as you or I would do… not worry about millicubits but wrap the foil round the column and cut it along the overlap!

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