# @stem_antics on Instagram

- **Type:** Video
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DavG3EGgXi-
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/67970789-stem-antics-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/135dcc4cb3.jpg
- **Posted:** 2026-07-13T14:16:27.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Stem Antics (@stem_antics) — https://gondola.cc/stem_antics

## Caption

In Deyang, China, a machine stands roughly 27 metres above ground and pushes down with 80,000 tonnes of force. That is about eight Eiffel Towers, funnelled through a die you could eat dinner on.

Forging exists because metal has a memory. Casting leaves dendrites and porosity. Machining slices straight through the grain, leaving severed fibre ends exposed at the surface. Forging is the only process that bends the grain flow around the geometry itself, which is why landing gear, turbine discs and crankshafts all begin life under something enormous.

Two philosophies dominate the shop floor:

- Hammers deliver energy. A ram falls and dumps its kinetic store, E = 1/2mv², into the billet in a few milliseconds. Ram speeds of 4-9 m/s push strain rates past 100 per second.
- Presses deliver force. Hydraulic rams creep at 0.05-0.5 m/s and hold the load long enough for deformation to reach the centre of the billet rather than merely skinning it.

The load required climbs faster than intuition allows. Friction locks the metal to the die face, so the pressure needed rises steeply toward the centre of the workpiece. Engineers call it the friction hill, and it is the reason a modest increase in forging diameter can multiply the required tonnage several times over.

Hence the giants. The USAF Heavy Press Program of the 1950s built two 50,000-ton presses, commissioned in 1955 and still working today in Cleveland and in Grafton, Massachusetts. The Cold War logic was blunt: whoever could forge the largest single-piece bulkhead could build the lightest, fastest aeroplane.

Before all of it came James Nasmyth’s steam hammer of 1839, precise enough to crack an egg in a wine glass and brutal enough to flatten a white-hot ingot.

Every strong thing you trust was once persuaded, violently, into shape.

#stemantics #forging #materialsscience #manufacturing #engineering

## Stats

- **Views:** 22,005
- **Likes:** 225
- **Shares:** 0
- **Comments:** 3

## Tags

engineering, materialsscience, manufacturing, forging, stemantics

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