billmac
Stainless
- Joined
- Oct 17, 2004
- Location
- Lancashire, UK
I have some more photos from a collection of Hick Hargreaves images. Hick Hargreaves were one of the big British mill engine builders based in Bolton Lancashire. They pioneered Corliss valve mill engines in the UK and made a large number of them. They also made drop valve and uniflow engines at a later date. Some of their engines were very large indeed - a 10,000 hp engine for power generation was an example. The company eventually stopped making mill engines but then specialised in very lare condensers for power generation.
The last set of Hick Hargreaves photos I posted were of some of their more interesting machine tools; this set is mostly engine based so I have started a new thread. There are a large number of these photos and I will post a selection in small batches with some explanation of what I think is shown. In some cases I am not sure what is going on, so please comment if you can add something.
This is part of a flywheel loaded on a rail wagon. A lot of work needed to get that properly blocked up and secured. The earliest mill engines were limited by the need to use horse drawn wagons for at least part of their journey to the customers site. This constraint largely went with the railway age, but parts still had to fit the loading gauge.
Flywheels were assembled and finish machined before shipping. They were were then disassembled and transported in parts that could be sensibly handled by on-site rigging. The next photo shows a flywheel assembled in the Hick Hargreaves works.
This shows the construction of a typical flywheel. The flywheel hub is fitted to the crankshaft with wedges/keys. This can be done quite accurately with skilled fitters - a bit like centreing a workpiece in a four jaw chuck. The rim consists of segments that are tied together with 'dog bones'. In this photo, the crankshaft is posssibly a dummy used just for this operation. At the bottom left you can see a barring gear that can be engaged with the flywheel to turn it. In the background you can see what I think is toolpost which would be used to true the flywheel. This is not a typical textile mill engine flywheel because there sre no sign of rope grooves. Possibly it was for something like a rolling mill.
Flywheels were made of cast iron. This material is of course realtively weak in tension. If a mill engine ran too fast there was a real danger of the flwheel exploding and there were number of famous disasters of this type in the UK. If you do the sums to calculate the kinetic energy stored in a flywheel of perhaps 30+ tons you get some very surprising results. A flywheel explosion had a similar effect to a bomb going off - demolishing a large part of the mill and typically causing death and injury.
This is a crankshaft for an engine. You can see the bearings that the crank is rotating on. In the middle is what I think is a counterweight temporarily attached to make it easier and safer to turn. You can see a gear attached to the crankshaft that is being used to turn it via a worm drive. I don't see toolposts in place so it is not clear what operation is being performed, however you can see jacking screws between the crank webs so possibly there are some checks for runout and straightness. Another possibility is that some turning operations are being done on the ends of the crank which cannot be seen in the photo.
More photos later.
The last set of Hick Hargreaves photos I posted were of some of their more interesting machine tools; this set is mostly engine based so I have started a new thread. There are a large number of these photos and I will post a selection in small batches with some explanation of what I think is shown. In some cases I am not sure what is going on, so please comment if you can add something.
This is part of a flywheel loaded on a rail wagon. A lot of work needed to get that properly blocked up and secured. The earliest mill engines were limited by the need to use horse drawn wagons for at least part of their journey to the customers site. This constraint largely went with the railway age, but parts still had to fit the loading gauge.
Flywheels were assembled and finish machined before shipping. They were were then disassembled and transported in parts that could be sensibly handled by on-site rigging. The next photo shows a flywheel assembled in the Hick Hargreaves works.
This shows the construction of a typical flywheel. The flywheel hub is fitted to the crankshaft with wedges/keys. This can be done quite accurately with skilled fitters - a bit like centreing a workpiece in a four jaw chuck. The rim consists of segments that are tied together with 'dog bones'. In this photo, the crankshaft is posssibly a dummy used just for this operation. At the bottom left you can see a barring gear that can be engaged with the flywheel to turn it. In the background you can see what I think is toolpost which would be used to true the flywheel. This is not a typical textile mill engine flywheel because there sre no sign of rope grooves. Possibly it was for something like a rolling mill.
Flywheels were made of cast iron. This material is of course realtively weak in tension. If a mill engine ran too fast there was a real danger of the flwheel exploding and there were number of famous disasters of this type in the UK. If you do the sums to calculate the kinetic energy stored in a flywheel of perhaps 30+ tons you get some very surprising results. A flywheel explosion had a similar effect to a bomb going off - demolishing a large part of the mill and typically causing death and injury.
This is a crankshaft for an engine. You can see the bearings that the crank is rotating on. In the middle is what I think is a counterweight temporarily attached to make it easier and safer to turn. You can see a gear attached to the crankshaft that is being used to turn it via a worm drive. I don't see toolposts in place so it is not clear what operation is being performed, however you can see jacking screws between the crank webs so possibly there are some checks for runout and straightness. Another possibility is that some turning operations are being done on the ends of the crank which cannot be seen in the photo.
More photos later.