On a seemingly daily basis these days we’re reminded how dumb people can be. From idiotic acts behind the wheel to the way problems are solved it seems like we’re a species that’s lost its way. Thankfully there are videos and situations like the one you are about to watch to prove that we’re still pretty brainy when we put our heads together. You are going to see a pretty quick video about how a ship propeller is manufactured and it is pretty great.
This is no little outboard prop, either. While we do not know the weight we do know that it is 23ft across and that there’s enough molten steel used to make the thing that it takes five days for the thing to cool down enough in the mold for the workers at the foundry to work with it. Also, it is large enough that they bust it out of the mold by using jackhammers mounted on small excavators. This is seriously big business!
Perhaps are impressive as the casting process is the machining process. The whole works gets loaded into a mill the likes of which we have never seen before and it begins the process of slowly machining the prop so that it is absolutely smooth and the blades are finished at the exacting standards the engineers want. The most interesting quote is from an engineer who talks about how props used to be designed for speed and now have prioritized fuel efficiency above all else.
This is neat!
