Old Skool Engineering! Ship Building

[Fat Audi 80]

I like this:

http://www.shipsnostalgia.com/guides/William_Doxford_and_Sons#The_Manufacturing_Process

H&S - My ****!

[rs200]

very nice 6 cilinder engine....

i was thinking that my 3B engine is complicated-but isn't.

[gunman]

brilliant, and not a pair of safety goggles or gloves in sight

[ciaranthemurph]

Great website, thanks for sharing. I'm hopefully going to the Wartsila factory in Sweden next year for a engine maintenance course with my work, although I imagine that it will only be the smaller medium speed 4 strokes that we will be seeing as opposed to the larger 2 stroke Sulzers.

[bambridge]

Thats proper engineering, seen some big lathes like that machining ship crank shafts @ a company in Lincoln. make my machines look like Lego

[dest]

I love stuff like this!
The sad thing is that its probably all gone now, when you see the scale of it all you can understand why people get so upset at it all closing down

[Ian Simmonds]

Goes to show what clever bu&gers we used to be....

[Jenks]

Magnificent!

[Graham]

If its a custom designed 1 or 2 off engine ther is no other way to do them, its too expensive doing cnc programs to make most of these components unless your going to mass produce them. These shops now exist in china where workforce is cannon fodder. British steel Teesside still has big machine shops similar to these which will still be in use, even though big big jobs like this will rarely go in there these days. maybe one or 2 a year making big rolls and drive shafts.
Sad shame but the communism countries can make these components for relative pennys compared to the western world.

[S2central.net]

Nice find... proper Engineering there alright. Quite amazing to think things like that were all hand drawn and with no computer assistance for material selection it shows what skills have been forgotten by way of 'progress'.

[GazzaG60]

never mind the parts. what about the engineering that goes into the machines to make the parts.

[Fat Audi 80]

Or the machines, that make the machines that make the parts!

[GazzaG60]

which came first the machine or the part?

should replace chicken and egg that should

[bunyoch]

Hope you guys like this little baby - http://people.bath.ac.uk/ccsshb/12cyl/ -same theme but more modern

[Rusty]

I'm nursing a semi-on. That's proper big Engineering by skilled fabricators. Shame those skills are being lost all the time, guess automation has negated the requirement for such people.