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HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY, TECHNOLOGY, OBJECTS AROUND US
Steam hammer. History of invention and production
Directory / The history of technology, technology, objects around us The steam hammer dominated mechanical engineering for 90 years and was one of the most important machines of its time. Its creation and introduction into production in terms of its significance for the industrial revolution can only be compared with the introduction of a mechanized lathe support, carried out by Henry Maudsley at the turn of the XNUMXth century.
The important place occupied by the hammer in the production chain was due to the great importance of forging in the overall technological process for producing iron products. As already mentioned, the origin of forging is associated with the raw-material method of iron reduction. The crack of soft iron, extracted from the blast furnace, had a loose porous structure. Her pores were filled with slag. In order to obtain high-quality iron and steel for making tools, the slag had to be removed and the pores welded. This is exactly what was achieved by forging. It was possible to forge metal only by heating it to welding heat: the blows applied by the hammer had to be as powerful as possible so that welding in the places of delamination really occurred and voids did not form. In addition, strong blows squeezed out the remaining slag from hot metal, which also increased the quality of iron. Only well-forged metal was then suitable for the production of tools and weapons, and for many centuries they were also made exclusively by forging. Later, in the XVIII-XIX centuries, machine parts were also forged. In ancient times, all blacksmith work was carried out by the blacksmith himself. In the future, there was a division of labor - the blacksmith continued to perform the most qualified part of the work, and the heavy, low-skilled part was carried out by the hammerers who worked under his leadership. The blacksmith worked with a hammer of 1-2 kg, and the hammerers worked with sledgehammers, the weight of which reached 12 kg. Sledgehammers were mounted on long handles made of hard, elastic, non-splintering wood. The long handle made it possible to hold the sledgehammer with both hands and beat in a circular motion "in a swing". The division of labor between the blacksmith and the hammerer opened up the possibility of mechanizing the heavy monotonous blows produced by the latter and transferring his work to the mechanism. In the Middle Ages, a cam hammer powered by a water wheel was invented. The first such hammers appeared already in the 1784th century, and their widespread use dates back to the XNUMXth century. At the end of the XNUMXth century, hammers driven by a steam engine came into use. A patent for the invention of such a hammer was received in XNUMX by James Watt.
Connecting the hammer to the machine did not at first change anything in its own design. It was the same tail, cam hammer that, four hundred years before Watt's discovery, was powered by a water wheel. Moreover, in it one could easily see its ancient manual prototype. The age of steam did not change either its shape or the principle of operation, it only increased its size and weight. But this situation could not last long. In the following decades, the development of mechanical engineering, railway construction and, mainly, the construction of colossal ocean-going steamships required the processing of parts of unprecedented dimensions. Shafts of paddle wheels, cranks and other parts of steam engines often reached enormous sizes. For their manufacture, giant machines began to be created, including powerful steam hammers. However, the design of the cam hammer, which had many shortcomings, did not allow forging especially large workpieces with high quality. The strength of the hammer blow directly depended on the height of its fall. Meanwhile, with an increase in the size of the workpiece, the free space between the striker and the anvil decreased, and, consequently, the impact force weakened. This was a great inconvenience, since when processing large and massive parts, the impacts turned out to be the weakest, and vice versa - when processing parts of insignificant thickness, the hammer acted with maximum force, which was completely opposite to the needs of production. As a result, the massive part had time to cool before forging was completed. It had to be heated again and again transferred under the hammer. It took a lot of time and effort, but the quality of forging still left much to be desired. In addition, since the movement of the hammer was not carried out in a straight line, but in an arc, it was never possible to achieve strict parallelism between the surface of the hammer and the anvil (except when the hammer was intended for forging parts of the same thickness). Such was the state of affairs by the beginning of the 40s, when the Nesmith steam hammer appeared, built on completely different principles. It immediately became widespread, as it met the most pressing needs of production. The reason for this remarkable invention was given by the following circumstance. The Great Western Company, for which Nesmith's plant constantly supplied metal-cutting machines, received an order to build a giant steamship "Great Britain". The steamer had to have a giant crankshaft with a diameter of about 750 mm. As it turned out, it was completely impossible to forge such a shaft with the help of the hammers that existed then. Having learned about the difficulties of the company, Nesmith thought about how to carry out such a gigantic forging. At first, he intended to improve the old hammer, but then he realized that it was necessary to abandon the previous scheme altogether and create a new device in which the steam engine and drummer would be connected into a single mechanism. One of the main shortcomings of all previous hammers was that the movement from the steam engine to the impact part of the hammer was transmitted extremely irrationally. The reciprocating motion of the piston in the cylinder of the machine was first converted into rotational motion of the camshaft. Then it was necessary to convert the rotational movement of the shaft into the reciprocating movement of the hammer itself. "And was there any benefit in this complex transformation of the movement? Absolutely none," Nesmith later wrote. "On the contrary, only many important disadvantages resulted from this - first of all, power was lost." Well aware of the shortcomings of the old design, Nesmith created a new machine with a free-falling working part, which was deprived of them. The main parts of his hammer were a cylinder, a piston and a frame supporting them. Steam cylinder C was positioned so that the piston rod protruded towards the anvil K. Cylinder C was supported by two pillars O forming a frame. "Baba" B moved between these racks in the grooves and carried the striker, which was interchangeable and depended on the nature of the work being done. The steam from the boiler through pipe P entered the chamber in which the spool moved. When the spool occupied the lower position, steam entered under the piston and lifted it, as well as the stem, "woman" and striker. If the handle was turned in the other direction, then the spool stopped the flow of steam under the piston and opened it to the atmosphere through the main pipe. Then the falling parts, under the influence of their own weight, hit the workpiece with a force completely inaccessible to the tail cam hammer. The steam pressure was regulated by reducing the opening through which it was released. In this way it was possible to make the hammer fall slower or faster and, accordingly, deliver more or less strong blows. By completely shutting off the steam outlet, it was possible to instantly stop the hammer at any point.
How obedient the new hammer was in management, says such an episode. In 1843, the Lords of the Admiralty arrived at Nesmith's factory to inspect his invention. Nesmith himself drove the machine, which had a weight of 2 tons of falling parts. To surprise the lords, he prepared something like a trick. A crystal glass with a raw egg was placed on the anvil. Starting the car, Nesmith broke the shell of the egg without damaging the glasses. The commercial success of the new machine exceeded all expectations. The hammer became a sensation among machine builders. In order to get acquainted with its device, engineers and mechanics came from all over the country. Many orders were received, and the steam hammer began its victorious march, first in England, and then throughout the globe. (One of the first orders came from Russia.) This invention brought Nesmith worldwide fame and fame as one of the leading machine builders. Even during his lifetime, in the second half of the 1861th century, steam hammers reached colossal proportions. So, in 50, the Fritz hammer was built at the Krupp factory. His "woman" weighed XNUMX tons. Author: Ryzhov K.V.
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