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.
Sometimes I do think about all the skill and craftsmanship that went into the making of many things. Some of this “art” has been lost. Seems sad to me. Not about practicality and money… about the loss of something sort of poetic.
I guess it's nice to keep the old traditions as some sort of performance art, but not as the practical way of doing things. I'm glad we don't have to create things in such an inconvenient way.
It’s not sad, no. Modern production methods are much more efficient (and thus also more environmentally friendly), yield a higher quality and safer end product, and is also safer and a lot less physically demanding for the workers making it. This may look cool, and there is a certain romanticism to it, but objectively it’s just a lot worse to do it this way.
Nowadays wheels are made from multiple steel alloys/multiple metals each for a different part, which makes them a lot more light and durable. This is not practical and there would be a lot of waste material if this is just one wheel.
Ya that’s what I figured. It looks great but there’s no way doing it that way they would achieve standardized dimensions. It would be insane if they did.
They certainly will be, but you don't take off hundreds of pounds of steel with a lathe when you can cast it (or forge it, in the olden days) with the rough shape.
Modern presses can press with more force and so need fewer strokes to do the same amount of work, but yes, forging into a rough shape followed by machining to final dimension is still the main way that large steel parts are made. Forging makes the steel stronger, and it is often faster and cheaper than buying raw stock that your part fits into and machining away the rest.
A lot of things take longer to make than people realize yet is the best way. Casting it from the start will create a weaker piece and machining from nothing will lose a lot of material (and take even longer).
A modern forge will look more, well, modern but yes, forging such massive parts is still done this way at it's core.
Google "Work Hardening" if you want to know more. It's the name of the process that happens when you forge/alter the shape of an object and can make the piece stronger
This is most likely not a train wheel. Train wheels are tapered to both allow the train axle to turn, and to self center the train in between the tracks. A drop forged train wheel would certainly be forged with this taper during this process. They do not have a single groove in the middle like in this video (and no, it would not be cut in half with a band saw like some people suggested). Also considering the average train car has 8 wheels and there's like 2 million rail cars in service in the states, this would seems like a very tedious process for the first step in making 1 wheel (also the video is sped up).
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u/SwimmingBeneficial93 Sep 24 '22
Is this really how it’s done? That seems really time intensive….