The key take-away for me after watching this video is to not prematurely jump to conclusions. I stopped right after the team photo praising the teamwork first time around. While impressed by the teamwork and skills of manual labor, I was unimpressed by the roughness of the forged product. Only after reading some of the comments here did I realize that was not the end of the story. More stills at the end of the video show that the end product after further milling is indeed high quality to tight spec.

I feel like this experience of making a premature judgement may have some relevance to understanding China stories in general. The crudeness of some of the implements fit with my pre-conceived bias that the product was not going to be high quality, even though the skills of the labor involved should have alerted me that there should be sufficient value-add to justify the investment in said skills. I even thought this was some weird craftsmanship demo.

Interesting sets of comments here and on the various videos.

"hammer forging" is an old an well understood technique, its basically taking a blacksmith's workflow and scaling it up with hydraulics and mechanical lift assist :-). That said, once the initial shape is good, they chuck it up in a pretty good sized lathe to bring it into final tolerance. This saves a lot of wasted steel since you don't spend tool time cutting away a ton or more of excess material.

Forging also makes the steel harder but a bit more less tough (sometimes a part will be annealed in a large oven after forging to release stresses).

While I'm sure these guys all know a guy who is missing a hand or foot or died while doing this, all of the ironworkers I've met and talked with seemed to really enjoy their work. My guess is that its cathartic pounding some really amazing material into shape. A blacksmith at Plumas Eureka state park remarked that the amazing thing about the blacksmiths of the 1890's when the mine was operating was that their handy work was around for all to see and admire some 125 years later, and it still serves its intended purpose. Not something I can say about software I've written or hardware I've designed.

Mesmerizing... sent this to my metal working Dad and he was harsh in his criticism:

- complete lack of safety gear for the workers, especially against hearing loss

- open coke burning contributing to air pollution

- no quality control with obvious cold working of the metal

- no noise or pollution abatement for the neighbors

There were more criticisms, but he was extremely dubious about the claim that the final product met US production standards.

this is almost certainly illegal, but they paid someone to look the other way, because it's cheaper, and faster (and hence more dangerous/problematic) to do it this way.

I agree with the comment as far as it goes... but it's only cheaper and faster, if you need a relatively small number of these parts. If you can standardize the forged part (before mill/lathe), then it's almost certainly cheaper, faster (per part), and more repeatable/efficient to build an automated forge to do it.

That's even ignoring legality or safety.

> he was extremely dubious about the claim that the final product met US production standards.

I have my doubts about backyard foundry guys having traceable calibration paperwork for their ultrasonic testing equipment (which is the only standard they mention; there are many many more).

Pretty sure this scene is straight out of the American frontier in the industrial revolution.

holy cow that open fire was smoking like hell. No wonder Beijing is a smoggy mess with production like this happening.

I love the teamwork and mutual understanding. I'd have a hard time making a circular object like that out of clay, yet these guys collaborate to make this massive thing with very little drama (or explicit communication). As a software person I love me a bit of metal bashing :-)

It would be awesome to know how long their apprenticeship period was—or is there even one? That nonverbal communication is impressive, and the picture at the end gives me the impression that they're proud as a team of their work.

I was thoroughly impressed by the precise manipulation with the forklifts, particularly the rotation while they were punching the hole in the center. One guy pushes it at an offset angle, which rotates it, then the other repositions it to center. It's almost like a dance.

Having driven a couple of forklifts and excavators some years ago, yes, this takes quite a load of skill - especially that they basically did not communicate at all.

For the precision, here's a video that I can find on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkhw9aXQi_0

edit: I thought it was a Chinese competition I watched before. It seems not. There were similar skill competitions with different large equipment

It's funny, things like this remind me how much we overrate certain kinds of expertise and underrate others.

Those smiths will probably make a fraction of what the average software developer will and hopefully they won't die an early death due to some kind of industrial accident. This video might literally be the only mark that one of them leaves on history.

The intelligence and skill it takes to do it though is astounding. These guys might not be even able to read (this is not an assumption, just a possibility), but they can do this as well as anyone on the planet. It's a real monument to human ingenuity.

Meanwhile, his well-educated counterpart in the West can't stop getting job offers because they've figured out how to twiddle some bits. If they're lucky, they might even be able to make something worth hundreds of thousands, or millions, or even billions, and then people will assume that they know what they are doing and that their opinions matter.

But at the end of the day...there's very little difference between them. We're just really smart creatures.

Yeah. They're doing it because it's cheaper for them to do it that way, not because they're not smart enough to do it another way. There's a remarkable amount of ingenuity and skill going on there.

I think we will eventually abandon a lot of the "wisdom" behind supply & demand.

Yes, good point. It considers only one aspect of things.

China reportedly has literacy rate of 96.4%. As a successful software dev of 20+ years, I don't expect to leave any mark on history. What I create is obsolete and hopefully replaced in matter of years.

There's a significant difference in the type of workmanship involved, though. David Pye called the traditional way the "workmanship of risk" and the modern way the "workmanship of certainty"

Although software engineers do have a lot of discretion about how they do their job, it's not a repeated process of judgement and dexterity in the way traditional crafts were.

See http://topologicalmedialab.net/xinwei/classes/readings/philt...

You can tell this is routine and they have memorized the steps of making this part.

> with very little drama (or explicit communication)

There's a guy directing them - he's just off frame to the right, and was only visible once that I could tell. But he's directing their movements, both with hand motions and (presumably) orally.

Very cool (and hot.)

Here is a Swedish version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEF2erBBVZ4 (first 3 minutes)

This looks significantly safer therefore less impressive. Stupid i know but it's true.

That's subjective. To me the forces exerted by those machines (particularly the first "upsetting" and "punching") look more impressive than the "hammer it out" approach.

It'd be interesting to see a comparison of the economics and flexibility of the two foundries.

That is the most interesting question about old industrialized countries vs "China" (put in quotes because they certainly have developed beyond a pure low-wage approach by now). The high per-hour productivity achieved by highly optimized automation seems to come at a cost that is difficult to quantify.

One year you might proudly undercut an army of low wage welders with your sophisticated welding robots. But if a year later the market suddenly demands carbon fiber, then your robots will weld on at a loss to at least partially recoup their investment while the welders are retrained for doing prepreg layups. The difference is ultimately rooted in the initial wage differential, but the consequences go beyond price.

The machinery at the Swedish foundry actually looks pretty flexible to me. One of the big differences I saw was the hydraulics, so they could do a step very quickly, where the hammer might take several drops to accomplish the same thing.

Economically, the Swedish approach is so much faster, and less labor intensive too; given enough volume it's advantages are self-evident if labor and electricity costs are roughly the same.

We know this because of what eventually happened to British ship building in the 60's to 80's; British ship building was very labor intensive and staunchly anti-automation because of the militant union movements in the UK at the time. Competition from Sweden, Korea and Japan wiped them out, after 150 years of global dominance.

Not only safer but with a vastly superior final product.

Those flanges being made with the Chinese hammer are extremely crude. You can see the roughness of the surface in the final shot. Welding them onto the end of the pipe will require lots and lots of filler, and the mating surface will require a very thick gasket.

Also LOL at the guy checking for diameter and roundness by measuring in two different spots with a tape measure.

They are shaved down on a lathe at the end, then tested for conformance. The end product looked very 'high tech'. I don't know if the method has any significant effect on internal defects relative to the safer method though.

Are you saying it doesn't get machined down on all surfaces? I can imagine there being less waste and higher yield on the more controlled process, but could you explain how the final product is any different?

Well if they do machine it then they're going to take off the hardened surface put on by forging. Maybe that doesn't matter for a pipe flange.

But that would also take a gigantic lathe, given the backyard nature of their forging setup I'd be interested to see how they do that.

They show the machining in stills at the end of the video. The also show that it meets the specs with high precision.

You should watch the entire video, or just skip to the end and see the stills that show the milling stage.

/on the street/using a giant permanently installed industrial hammer/

Ha yeah obviously the work yard of a foundry or metal shop of some kind. Still a damn impressive display of drop forging.

Why is it impressive (as a person who doesn't know anything about such stuff)? the coordination, etc.?

Edit: The only kind of forging and smith work I've ever seen (live) is of Indian itinerant blacksmiths in villages (like at fairs) doing their stuff. Used to sometimes get iron garden tools made by them.

Well that's sort of like asking me what is good about pizza, or why I like a certain song, but anyway... I find it impressive that using only a couple of forklifts and a drop hammer they were able to forge a part of that size and shape.

Well that's exactly it :) I know something about pizzas and songs - so if either of them was the topic I probably wouldn't have asked why it was impressive. But knew nothing about forging. Anyway, got it now, thanks. And I agree it is impressive.

I'd be curious to know how the hammer works. The classic invention of the industrial revolution was Nasmyth's steam hammer, but plumbing providing steam at high pressure seems absent from this setup.

Nasmyth's hammer was the first automatic hammer that could come down harder than just the acceleration due to gravity. So I'm very curious to know how that's being achieved here.

This reminds me of the show "How It's Made" which I watch religiously. One take away I always get from the show is how much is automated and how much isn't. Metal work always seems to requires a tremendous amount of skill (e.g. one of the episodes was making shovels and spades and an apprenticeship requires like a year of training). Even metal casting requires skill because of the finishing (sanding + polishing) required.

Regardless I highly recommend the show if you like watching things like this.

(funny side story about me watching the show: my wife hates the show and told me to change the channel because she said it is like "watching paint dry"... sure enough next scene paint was being dried).

They way they maneuvered those forklifts in the beginning almost reminded me of watching ants dragging a large bit of scavenge back to the colony, or any sort of insect with limited manipulation affordances (mandibles, maybe forelegs). I wonder how long it takes the brain to learn to translate to limited output. I remember being utterly baffled and clumsy my first time playing a twin stick first person shooter. Is the process generalizable to any sort of 'get my output devices to do my intention' process (i.e., does the same process wire you to learn to play a musical instrument, or type)?

To everyone complaining that this looks unsafe and rough: yes, it's not as safe as it could be, and yes the forging is not as perfect as it could be (although it gets machined later anyway).

But this is a bunch of guys working together and solving a problem, despite not having the tooling or resources they might like. This is great.

Wish they'd shown some video of the turning. That lathe is impressive!

That's not in the "street" its a steel plant with an out door drop hammer.

Here's a video of the same process, but from a country where firms have an easier time accumulating capital: https://youtu.be/tEF2erBBVZ4

Love the open forge (probably coal-fired) in the background. In other news: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/17/beijing-smog-p...

What are these pieces used for? They seem very rough

If you view through to the end of shows how they are then machined into very tight spec parts. The completed product is anything but rough.

Have a look at the end of the video, you will see it's finishing process in snapshots to engineering specs. The main process you are seeing is only the initial forging before you use higher accuracy machinery for the final processing.

And with a total time less than it would take to machine the same piece out of an appropriately sized block of solid steel.

Forging is frequently used to get to an approximate shape, even in things as simple as forks.

Additionally - generally speaking - forged steel has better mechanical properties than cast steel. Example:

http://www.atcgroup.com.au/CustomCastingForging/TheDifferenc...

I was wondering why not cast it to a ring mold then finalize the shape ?

Molds can be significantly more expensive for low-volume parts, even for the same shape. There can also be problems with cooling of the shape.

Were that to have been cast it would have had completely different metallurgical properties.

Extremely unsafe, it's quite easy to spot moments where this video could have had a gruesome conclusion, but I'm glad too see that at least someone gave them those plastic masks to provide the illusion of safety to those who wear them. And health care in Cina, I'm guessing that's top notch.

the true genius isn't shown in this video

the true genius occurred when a manager and some workers first figured out how to take that hunk of metal, a forklift, some guys with metal sticks and that towering smashee-thingee out back and produce those lovely flanges for about five dollars and ninety cents worth of labor

Around the ten minute mark when the forklift puts the piece back in the furnace you can see off to the side someone throws water on the ground in front of the furnace so as not to melt the forklift's tires. Gives some idea of the temperatures involved and working conditions.

This is amazing engineering. Great teamwork for these guys. They seem well-trained and know what they are doing. My first thought is this is very dangerous. Not much safety measures. What if the hammer drops on someone's head?

i suspect the danger is if they don't position the piece correctly, the hammer drops on it, and something goes flying or shatters and mauls someone.

I know it's probably a custom order, but don't they have a cast which is more similar to the end product that they can use, saving them time by skipping a few steps?

Forging has benefits over casting in cost and in the properties of the finished product.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forging

As I understand it, forged metal is stronger than cast metal, because the forging process aligns the crystallized structure of the metal into a "grain" that is parallel to the geometry of the final part.

With a few exoskeleton suits it would be possible to make such custom forged pieces quite fast.

The forklift is a little bit cumbersome, while the manual workers don't have enough strength.

Honestly, I didn't see a lot of wasted time in that - the individual moves were happening as quickly as the hammer could go up and come back down; only the gross moves to change out tools or go back to the forge seemed less than optimal.

Look at the Swedish forging video someone posted above, they have a "forklift" with a pretty cool mechanical gripper, which is acting like a big hand for the operator.

hot damn!

I can't help but say, aside from being awesome, it reminds me of the hydraulic press channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcMDMoNu66_1Hwi5-MeiQgw

Mad Max meets Conan.

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