Heavy Press Program

The Wyman-Gordon 50,000-ton forging press

The Heavy Press Program was a Cold War-era program of the United States Air Force to build the largest forging presses and extrusion presses in the world. These machines greatly enhanced the US defense industry's capacity to forge large complex components out of light alloys such as magnesium and aluminium. The program began in 1950 and concluded in 1957 after construction of four forging presses and six extruders, at an overall cost of $279 million. Eight of them are still in operation today, manufacturing structural parts for military and commercial aircraft. They still hold the records for size in North America, though they have since been surpassed by presses in Japan, France, Russia and China.

The program produced ten machines, listed below.

Background

The Alcoa 50,000-ton forging press

The Heavy Press Program was motivated by experiences from World War II. Germany held the largest heavy die forging presses during the war, and translated this advantage into high performance jet fighters. The Soviet Union captured the largest German press to survive the war, with a capacity of 33,000 ton, and were suspected to have seized the designs for an even larger 55,000 ton press. The next two largest units were captured by the United States and brought across the Atlantic, but they were half the size at 16,500 ton. As cold war fears developed, American strategists worried that this would give the Soviet Air Force a crucial advantage and designed the Heavy Press Program to help win the arms race.

Seventeen presses were originally planned with an expected cost of $389 million, but the project was scaled back to 10 presses in 1953.

Air Force Lieutenant General K. B. Wolfe was the primary advocate for the Heavy Press Program. Alexander Zeitlin was another prominent figure of the program.

Titanium bulkheads for the F15 jet fighter before and after pressing by the Alcoa 50,000 ton press

Presses

Capacity (short tons)	Type of press	Built by	Operated by	Location	Began Operation
13,200	extrusion		Alcoa	Lafayette, Indiana	1953
50,000	forging	Mesta Machinery	Alcoa	Air Force Plant 47, 1600 Harvard Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio	May 5, 1955
35,000	forging	United Engineering	Alcoa	Air Force Plant 47, 1600 Harvard Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio	1955
8,000	extrusion	Loewy Hydropress	Kaiser Aluminum	Halethorpe, Maryland
8,000	extrusion	Loewy Hydropress	Kaiser Aluminum	Halethorpe, Maryland
8,000	extrusion	Loewy Hydropress	Harvey Machine Co.	Torrance, California
12,000	extrusion	Lombard Corporation	Harvey Machine Co.	Torrance, California	August 1957 (Scrapped 1990s.)
50,000	forging	Loewy Hydropress	Wyman-Gordon	Air Force Plant 63, Grafton, Massachusetts	October 1955
35,000	forging	Loewy Hydropress	Wyman-Gordon	Air Force Plant 63, Grafton, Massachusetts	February 1955
12,000	extrusion	Loewy Hydropress	Curtiss-Wright	Buffalo, New York

Landmark designation

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers designated the 50,000-ton Alcoa and Wyman-Gordon presses as Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmarks. The Alcoa press weighs 8,000 tons and is 87 feet (26.5 meters) tall. The die table is 26 feet by 12 feet (7.9 by 3.7 meters), and the maximum stroke is 6 feet (1.82 meters).