Efficient vs. Economical

Tourmeister said:

I wonder how big the single largest piece of metal is on that thing? I bet that piece shown is not all one solid piece. But if it is...

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Not quite on the topic of efficiency, but I got to do some work at a machine shop near Houston for a bit last year that does a lot of turbomachinery work for the oil fields. I was absolutely astounded at the size of the equipment there. They had a vertical mill that went to the ceiling in a high-bay machine shop. Lathe's with spindles on them probably 12' in diameter. Giant rotary tables, giant grinding machines for balancing huge shafts, it was incredible.

kurt said:

I want to know how tight the tolerances are, And what the best oil is for something like that.

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http://www.twtex.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2708&postcount=7

Coolhand said:

Not quite on the topic of efficiency, but I got to do some work at a machine shop near Houston for a bit last year that does a lot of turbomachinery work for the oil fields. I was absolutely astounded at the size of the equipment there. They had a vertical mill that went to the ceiling in a high-bay machine shop. Lathe's with spindles on them probably 12' in diameter. Giant rotary tables, giant grinding machines for balancing huge shafts, it was incredible.

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Several of the shops that we send work to use machines that were built back in the mid to late thirties when we were gearing up for WWII. Even after all these years, they are still very accurate and fairly expensive. While we may design stuff that is relatively large, none of it is rocket science. Most of it is over designed as much as possible since the stress "analysis" used in the design is very basic. We don't do any FEA stuff at all. Tolerances do need to pretty tight though because we are dealing with leak sealing.