Helping San Diego, California and beyond since 1997.
Do you need
volunteer, community service, work, military or court hours?
|
|
Helping San Diego, California and beyond since 1997.
|
|
Click here and add this page to your favorites!
|
Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: BLA-BOS |
|
|
BOILER MAKING The practice of the boiler, bridge and girder shops may hereflues, &c., but is scarcely represented in bridge and girder work. Plates are bent to cylindrical shapes in boilermaking, for shells and furnaces, but not in girder work. Welding is much more common in the first than in the second, furnace flues being always welded and stand pipes frequently. In boiler work holes are generally drilled through the seams of adjacent plates. In bridge work each plate or bar is usually drilled or punched apart from its fellows. Boilers, again, being subject to high temperatures and pressures, must be constructed with provisions to ensure some elasticity and freedom of movement
the forms of which are inherently weak, provide for the first; the selection of steel or iron of high percentage elongation, and the imposition of temper, or bending tests, both hot and cold, provide for the second.The following are the leading features of present-day methods. It might be hastily supposed that, because plates, angles, tees, channels and joist sections are rolled ready for use, little work could be left for the plater and boilermaker. But actually so much is involved that subdivisions of tasks are numerous; the operations of templet-making, rolling, planing, punching and shearing, bending,quent stress, with liability to produce fracture. But it has been found that, when a shorn edge is planed and a punched hole enlarged by reamering, no harm results, provided not less than about -iis in. is removed. A great advance was therefore made when specifications first insisted on the removal of the rough edges before the parts were united. In the work of riveting another evil long existed. When holes are punched it is practically impossible to ensure the exact coincidence of holes in different plates which have to be brought together for the purpose of riveting. From this followed the use of the drift,a tapered rod driven forcibly by hammer
Fic. 2o.-Thornycroft-Schulz Water-tube Boiler. welding and forging, flanging, drilling, riveting, caulking, and tubing require the labours of several groups of machine attendants, and of gangs of unskilled labourers or helpers. Some operations also have to be done at a red or white heat, others cold. To the first belong flanging and welding, to the latter generally all the other operations. Heating is necessary for the rolling of tubes of small diameter ; bending is done cold or hot according to circumstances.The fact that some kinds of treatment, as shearing and punching, flanging and bending, are of a very violent character explains why practice has changed radically in regard to the method of performing these operations in cases where safety is a cardinal matter. Shearing and punching are both severely detrusive operations performed on cold metal; both leave jagged edges and, as experience has proved, very minute cracks, the tendency of which is to extend under subse-ing holes in adjacent plates, by which violent treatment the holes were forcibly drawn
Flanging signifies the turning or bending over of the edges of a plate to afford a means of union to other plates. Examples occur in the back end-plates of Lancashire and Cornish boilers, the front and back plates of marine boilers, the fire-boxes of locomotive boilers, the crowns of vertical boilers, the ends of conical cross-tubes, and the Adamson seams of furnace flues. This practice has superseded the older system of effecting union by means of rings forming two sides of a rectangular section (angle iron rings). These were a fruitful source of grooving and explosions in steam. boilers, because their sharp
block
diameter , and fire-box plates for locomotive boilers, have their entire flanges bent at a single squeeze between massive dies in a hydraulic press. In the case of the ends of marine boilers which are too large for such treatment, a special
special
These differences in practice would not have assumed such magnitude but for the introduction of mild steel in place of malleable iron. Iron suffers less from overheating and irregular heating than does steel. Steel possesses higher ductility, but it is also more liable to develop cracks if subjected to improper treatment. All this and much more is writ large in the early testing of steel, and is reflected in present-day practice. A feature peculiar to the boiler and plating shops is the enormous number of rivet holes which have to be made, and of rivets to be inserted. These requirements are reflected in machine design. To punch or drill
drill
Hand-riveting has mostly been displaced by hydraulic and pneumatic machines, with resulting great saving in cost,. and the advantage of more trustworthy and uniform results. For boiler work, machines are mostly of fixed type; for bridge and girder work they are portable, being slung from chains and provided with pressure water or compressed air by systems of flexible pipes. Welding fills a large place in boiler work, but it is that of the edges of plates chiefly, predominating over that of th'e bars and rods of the smithy. The edges to be united are thin and long, so that short lengths have to be done in succession at successive " heats." Much of this is hand work, and " gluts " or insertion pieces are generally preferred to overlapping joints. But in large shops, steam-driven power hammers are used for closing the welds. Parts that are commonly welded are the furnace flues, the conical cross-tubes and angle rings. Another aspect of the work of these departments is the immense proportions of the modern machine tools used. This development rs due in great degree to the substitution of steel for iron. The steel shell-plates of the largest boilers are i? in. thick, and these have to be bent into cylindrical forms. In the old days of iron boilers the capacity of rolls never exceeded about 4 in. plate. Often, alternatively to rolling, these thick plates are bent by squeezing them in successive sections between huge blocks operated by hydraulic pressure acting on toggle levers. And other machines besides the rolls are made more massive than formerly to deal with the immense plates of modern marine boilers. The boiler and plating shops have been affected by the general tendency to specialize manufactures. Firms have fallen into the practice of restricting their range of product, with increase in volume. The time has gone past when a single shop could turn out several classes of boilers, and undertake any bridge and girder work as well. One reason is to be found in the diminution of hand work and the growth of the machine tool. Almost every distinct operation on every section of a boiler or bridge may now be accomplished by one of several highly specialized machines. Repetitive operations are provided for thus, and by a system of templeting. If twenty or fifty similar boilers are made in a year, each plate, hole, flange or stay will be exactly like every similar one in the set. Dimensions of plates will be marked from a sample or templet plate, and holes will be marked similarly; or in many cases they are not marked at all, but pitched and drilled at once by self-acting mechanism embodied in drilling machines specially designed for, one set ofoperations on one kind of plate. Hundreds of bracing bars for bridges and girders will be cut off all alike, and drilled or punched from a templet bar, so that they are ready to take their place in bridge or girder without any adjustments or fitting. (J. G. H.) End of Article: BOILER If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
<a href="http://jcsm.org/StudyCenter/Encyclopedia/BLA_BOS/BOILER.html"> BOILER </a> |
|
|
(Previous) BOIL |
(Next) BOILING TO DEATH |
|
Sponsored Advertisements