Crankshaft Factory

Fancy going into crankshaft production? Here's how to do it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-inYCr-fV3Q

PPE (flipflops) must be worn.

Edited By JasonB on 02/10/2021 16:54:47

Amazing video.

It felt a little like watching evolution in action. The first stage lathe and machining was like I imagine James Watt's workshop to have been like, but by the end of the "production line" everything seemed more modern.(well, a little more modern)

Rod

Did it say BMW or Ford on the boxes?

Peter

Am I right in thinking that the ‘Final Check’ is done without any lubricant ?

MichaelG.

Aha … ‘Export Quality’ Tractor Parts from Belarus

Search for: crown mf-240 crankshaft

MichaelG.

Thanks for that Andy, now all I need is a longer piece of gas pipe on my chuck key.

To you sir only £160 in Belarus who knows.

Edited By Dave Halford on 02/10/2021 19:41:20

Where am I (or us)?. slip guages, dro's, sine bars, cnc, qtp's etc etc will take me a lifetime making on of those as someone said in a James Watt like workshop. Good video though

Edited By Mikelkie on 02/10/2021 20:32:23

Lathes being switched off and on by the wall switch, no emergency switch!

Worse than that.......the guy was actually smoking in the work place! H&S would be furious!

Yep, we used to work for a living too. Surprising what precision can be achieved with a single chuck key and a lump hammer.

Regards Ian.

The packaging says steel crankshaft but the chips and sparks say iron

Agreed. Founders sometimes use "semi-steel".

What was the process involving rotating a batch inside an enclosure? I thought it looked like some form of heat treatment.

Also, were the oilways completely drilled?

You probably get what you pay for!

Making a crankshaft that is accurate, durable and reliable is not easy.

Many world renowned manufacturers have found that, the hard way!

Get the radii, oilway drilling, heat treatment, nitriding, or surface finish wrong and you soon have a load of seizures or fatigue failures.. Nitriding, and similar salt bath processes have tom be very closely controlled if failures are to be avoided.

Even a good crankshaft can be failed in torsion by hanging the incorrect stuff on the back, or front of it.

Third world countries tend to be more accepting of poor or dubious manufacturing, and think that short life failures are the norm. It is only when they experience good quality components that standards improve.

But, we all have to start somewhere!

Howard

I assumed it was shot blasting given the surface finish that came out.

Having watched the video, realise that I have seen many crankshafts like those being made. BUT NOT under those conditions.

Wish my eyesight was good enough to read a vernier at such speed. Some gauging, but very little measurement.

They look like spurious spares!

Not uncommon.

I found pistons were being marketed in genuine spares boxes, and the material composition was acceptable.

But the manufacturer did not know that every genuine article could be traced back to the factory, and even the shift, on which the casting had been poured, so it was obvious that they were spurious, and possibly not accurately machined, but being passed off as genuine.

Howard

Fortunately, I and a colleague were spared having to travel to the country concerned to give evidence in the prosecution...

They're fast, but I bet they're not as fast as our Jason

I wonder what the production line to make AK's from railway lines looks like.

The 15 minutes inside the enclosure was shot blasting. Note the bag being opened and emptied.

Maybe as a means of stress relieving after the rough machining.

From the writing on the grossly overladen truck, would imagine that then factory was further south east than Belarus

Wish that my eyesight was so good that In read a vernier so quickly.

Looked more as if they were being used as gauges rather than measuring.

Note the bolt being used to check the tappings in the crankshaft palm!

The only measurements seemed to be on the grinder.

It all looked very much "near enough is good enough" to me.

But then, I've seen lots of the genuine article being produced, so am biased!

Howard

Judging by the uploader's other videos, its in Pakistan. Most of the others seem to show (heavy) vehicle repairs rather than manufacturing.

There's one which shows a truck front axle being overhauled. To us it seems strange to see people belting kingpins, etc. out with sledgehammers when they have a large-ish hydraulic press in the background (later used to straighten the axle beam), but it may be that given a surplus of labour and little or no form of social security, its socially desirable to employ relatives and friends in what appears to be pointlessly labour-intensive work (I remember seeing the same sort of thing in Portugal in the '80s and '90s where every job would have one person actually doing it, and two or three hangers on chatting and passing the occasional spanner).

Despite this, the truck repairers seem impressively skilled at making do with very limited resources - not even a workbench or vice (at one point they use the chuck of a lathe to hold the stub-axle carrier), and of course, no safety boots, or indeed boots at all.

Shot peening, the bag the bloke emptied was full of round shot. Shot peening increases the fatigue life of the unmachined surfaces.

For old car projects, I've had several "one off" cranks made here in the UK, other than starting out as a piece of round billet EN40B, none of the machining processes are any different to those in the YouTube video. These cranks are always Nitrided before final finish grinding.

Edited By Stueeee on 03/10/2021 13:24:55