[AT] OT - How a steam locomotive gets built in 1935

charlie hill charliehill at embarqmail.com
Sun Nov 18 09:09:10 PST 2012


John it's a long ways from today when we have CAD driven plasma cutters, 
router tables (for wood and laminates)
and 3 dimensional printers that will print with plastics and metals into 
solid objects.  Writing this I was thinking about
being in a boat manufacturing plant nearly 30 years ago.  The engineer was 
proudly showing me his new toy.
He could draw a panel for a boat interior on his CAD software, select print 
and send it down to a router table that he
took me down to see.   The thing was stacked high with 3/4" marine grade 
plywood like so much paper in a printer and it
had a router that looked very much like a giant ink jet printer head.   I 
was totally amazed.  He could quickly turn out
multiple, identical copies of the panel without a person ever touching them.
Now that sort of thing is ordinary.   I saw a rig on TV yesterday that was 
printing high end, sculpted architectural door
handles out of stainless steel powder spread over a thin glue.  After it was 
built up it was some how baked with bronze
powder that soaked into the pours in the stainless steel powder.  The end 
result was a very intricate piece of bronze allow
hardware.

Charlie

-----Original Message----- 
From: jtchall at nc.rr.com
Sent: Sunday, November 18, 2012 7:35 AM
To: Antique tractor email discussion group
Subject: Re: [AT] OT - How a steam locomotive gets built in 1935

Thanks for posting! I've got a few folks to share this with.

To really appreciate the manufacturing process in the video, you have to
realize this would be no simple feat today. I often look at old iron from a
machining aspect and wonder how they did that considering the lack of
carbide tooling, advanced cutting fluids, and no computers to build solid
models to see if it would all fit together. Highly skilled and extremely
smart craftsmen to put it lightly!

John Hall


-----Original Message----- 
From: Richard Walker
Sent: Saturday, November 17, 2012 1:36 PM
To: Antique tractor email discussion group
Subject: [AT] OT - How a steam locomotive gets built in 1935

If you have a fast internet connection and twenty minutes to watch this
video, it's fascinating.

A documentary film made in 1935, showing the processes of steam
locomotive building, including casting, forging, machining, and assembly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YblqWGmIYTg


- Richard


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