ABOM sized lathe

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SteveHGraham
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Re: ABOM sized lathe

Post by SteveHGraham »

Final thing: a two-part video series from 1952, showing the workings of the Naval Gun Factory at the Washington Naval Yard.

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Steggy
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Re: ABOM sized lathe

Post by Steggy »

WJH wrote: Tue Apr 10, 2018 1:00 pmI thought the battleship guns were made in a vertical lathe that was mostly beneath ground level, to avoid the problems with extreme lengths and gravity
Naval rifles have a lot of rigidity. To give you some perspective, the final iteration of the 16 inch battleship rifle was 50 calibers in length, measured from breech face to muzzle. That's more than 66 feet. About 50 feet of the barrel projected outward from the turret's gunhouse, which meant the barrel had to be exceptionally rigid to avoid any sagging. Supporting such a rigid piece in a horizontal lathe wouldn't be a problem if properly done.
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Steggy
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Re: ABOM sized lathe

Post by Steggy »

SteveHGraham wrote: Tue Apr 10, 2018 1:50 pm Final thing: a two-part video series from 1952, showing the workings of the Naval Gun Factory at the Washington Naval Yard.

That was from back when the USA had lots of industrial might.
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BadDog
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Re: ABOM sized lathe

Post by BadDog »

That's not a shaper, it's a planer. And it looks to me like it might be producing some sort of integral keyed (not sure the right term) piece rather than an actual gun barrel. Maybe some sort of recoil action?
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SteveHGraham
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Re: ABOM sized lathe

Post by SteveHGraham »

Whatever the part is, it's round, at least on top.
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pete
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Re: ABOM sized lathe

Post by pete »

I have some drawing shown in a detailed book about smooth bore cannon casting and machining them long before steam power was used. Animal power or water power was used with a lot of the machine tool parts made from heavy oak timbers instead of the later cast iron. They show at least one example of vertical boring the barrel upside down for chip evacuation and being rotated by horses with a fairly complex gear train to move the rotation up to the high tower mounted headstock. I haven't run across any mention of the WW I and WW II battleship guns being machined verticaly, but that doesn't mean much. All the pictures I've seen were done in mostly conventional lathes. They used multiple steadys and cutting the interrupted Welin breech screw thread used fast acting cams to run the cross slide in and out very quickly as the barrel rotated at slow speed. One artical I read somewhere on the net long ago did mention the high speed in/out on the cross slide resulted in fairly substantial maintenence costs on that part of the gun barrel lathes.

There were quite a few different countrys that had battle ships at sea during WW I and II and all obviously would have had the large machine tools and infastructure needed to build the guns. How true it is I don't know, but I've read numbers in the 250-450 range for shots fired and then the barrels needed to be replaced. It would be extremely expensive per shot fired given the total costs involved and today missles have pretty much killed off any need for the large 12"-16" sized guns. If? the technology to build decent rail guns catches up and allows us to build and operate them economically I think it's possible to see large battle ships being used again at some point just due to economics. No idea how long those barrels last for shots fired, but without the high rates of flame burning of the barrel rifleing the older battle ships had it might work? Last I heard was that rail gun future developement was sort of being left on the back burner for now.
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mcostello
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Re: ABOM sized lathe

Post by mcostello »

I worked at a steel mill when I was just out of high school. Best 9 months of My life. The Boss sensed I was a gear head and took me up to see a lathe turning. It was night shift and We went up to the second floor in a 8' square shanty. He said look out the small window. All I could see was a tool cutting and about 5' top and bottom of a piece of steel rotating. I said what is that, He said it is a big casting. I asked how big? He said 40'6". They loaded it up on a train to deliver and got about 15 miles away from where it was to be delivered and it was too big ab about 6". Train had to back up about 50 miles and get the 6" turned off. No idea of length as I could not see an end or tail stock or chuck.
pete
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Re: ABOM sized lathe

Post by pete »

Some of those steel mills had or used contractors that had massive lathes for turning the rolls used in the mills Mcostello. Youtube has a few videos up about turning those steel mill rolls. Even with carbide it's not a fast process. But 40'6" is I think the largest I've heard about for one single part on a lathe. In one of my old Model Engineer magazines there's a picture of a very large verical boring mill with what looks to be 2 model T's parked on the turntable with room for at least one or possibly two more.
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SteveHGraham
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Re: ABOM sized lathe

Post by SteveHGraham »

What is a "steel mill"?
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John Hasler
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Re: ABOM sized lathe

Post by John Hasler »

pete writes:
> There were quite a few different countrys that had battle ships at sea during WW I and II and
> all obviously would have had the large machine tools and infastructure needed to build the guns.

There were a lot more countries with battleships than battleship building countries.
John Hasler
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Re: ABOM sized lathe

Post by John Hasler »

SteveHGraham wrote: Thu Apr 12, 2018 4:04 pm What is a "steel mill"?
One of the places where Nucor does continuous casting.
RMinMN
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Re: ABOM sized lathe

Post by RMinMN »

SteveHGraham wrote: Thu Apr 12, 2018 4:04 pm What is a "steel mill"?
it's sort of related to a flour mill but with different starting ingredients.
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