America's Iron Giants - The World's Most Powerful Metalworkers
Machine Thinking3 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2019–2024
documentary · general · evergreen · 2019–2024 on HN
Machine Thinking tells the story of the Cold War Heavy Press Program, the giant forging presses that make parts for aircraft, missiles and turbines.
HN commenters recommend it as an excellent introduction to massive forging presses, especially in threads about gigacasting and large manufacturing machines.
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5 comments from Hacker News
I first learned about these presses several years ago from the YouTube channel Machine Thinking which is excellent and unfortunately infrequent. The linked video has some excellent footage of these beasts in action. "America's Iron Giants" ▶ this video
This youtube video seems related. ▶ this video This is the story of America's massive forging presses built during the cold war used to build America's most advanced machinery - the Heavy Press Program. Modern airplanes, missiles, helicopters, turbines - all have parts made on these giant machines! The Machine Thinking channel seems interesting.
The Machine Thinking channel has a very interesting video on this ▶ this video I wonder if these modern high pressure casting produce results closer to forging.
It’s the same principle just scaled up. What are we talking about here? This is not some ground breaking tech. It just got a Tesla PR spin. ▶ this video
Those heavy presses themselves seem to be nation-state level engineering projects, so it's unlikely that anyone would build more of them than they absolutely need. ▶ this video