The World's Largest Lathe Is For Sale

there had to be some big stuff around to make the barrels for the 16" guns on the old battle ships too
 
hdskip said:
The one at Norfolk was in the History Channel show titled City of Steel about building a Nimitz class carrier. The Ronald Reagan I think.
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That was it! Thanks
Pierre
 
Very cool! I wonder what sort of accuracy the machine is capable of? Something that size would also be affected by temperature as well I would assume.
 
Back when I was just house broken, dad moved the family to Houston in 1965. The company dad went to work for built drlling tools for the oilfield industry.
One of the key pieces of machinery that was used for drilling deep holes in drill collars was called a trepanner. These drilling machines were converted from old gun barrel boring lathes used back in WWII. They had several over the years that were over 120 foot long. Some of the machine tool manufactures of these old machines were primary Niles, LeBlond, Mesta. There were a couple other, names don't come to mind at the moment. I remember seeing a few of these later in the years and they still had property tags attached some saying "Property of Watervilt Arsenal".

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I spent 9 months at the Edgar Thompson steel mill around 1970. Would work there again in a heart beat. Was shown a small room up several small flights of steps. Inside was just a chair and a small access window looking at a piece of steel turning around. Could not see the top or bottom of the piece, just see only about 4' of material going around. Asked the boss who was showing this to Me, What is this? He said it was a lathe turning a 40' 6" Dia. piece of steel down to 40'. Seems the piece ordered was to big to go through a railroad tunnel. Missed it by 6" and the train had to back up 15 miles and bring it back. They knew I was interested in machinery back then, was just only cars then. Would just love to have that chance now as I think I know a bit more and would really enjoy it now.
 
  • spindle speed 60 to 2400 rpm
Imagine the size of the bearings!

Daryl
MN
 
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