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Re: Casting and Forging

Posted by Elliott on Mon Jul 14, 2003 06:36:38 AM

In reply top Casting and Forging posted by Joe Scheil on Sun Jul 13, 2003 10:27:18 AM

Thanks...

I can only imagine how difficult they must have been to cast. I am still casting a .303 browning and although the results are good, there are still a lot of problems to be overcome.

So with the Merlin, the major difficulty is in the casting? I am assuming with my limited engineering knowledge that the milling would be the easy bit (once all the difficulties have been thrashed out)



: Merlin crankcases are castings, with machined inner surfac
: es, that is true. There was comparitivly little to machin
: e out as the castings were pretty close to spot on. Thing
: s like the crankshaft are forged, very similar to automoti
: ve use. A forged steel crank is taken from a long piece i
: f steel and is hammered into shape to make the throws, the
: n machined. The cast cranks are lower performance applica
: tions. There are also billet cranks made for special appi
: cations machining them out of a solid piece. I believe th
: at forged cranks are sligtly stronger over time, but bille
: t is used for racing as it has a short lifespan anyway. L
: arge aluminum castings are very complex due to many factor
: s, and are done only by specialty shops. Dove, Merlin and
: Mercury Marine do modern racing engines. Falconer blocks
: for the V-12's are some of the largest, if not the larges
: t done today. When Chevrolet decided to build and Market
: the LT-5 motor in its special ZR-1 Corvette, GM found it w
: as too hard to make the aluminum castings themselves for t
: he engine blocks. Mercury Marine was contracted and they
: made the several thousand engines as a subcontractor. The
: re is some great information online regarding racecar modi
: fications from street engines, this is a great place to st
: art..

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