Large Cylinder Ideas

[Taylortractornut]

Well Ive hit the mother of most hydraulic cylinders today. We were cleaning up an old plant where we used to work and they wanted us to get rid of some scrap iron. I got several new sticks of angle iron and I found a reeving winch cylinder off the old Mack roll off truck we sold them. Its about 8 to 10 feet long11 inches in diameter and has a or 4 inch diameter ram. We are talking about a hellatious ram here. THey took it off and replaced it rather than build a jig to repack the front seal. I may make fence rail splitter. Got any Ideas i didnt want to see it scrapped out.

 

[art]

Do you have kids that fight over who is going to have the car? Give them each half! Just joking, nice find, but I can't think of anything other than your idea without owning a garbage truck!

 

[handymansvs]

Hello, The size of your cylinders reminds me of that old statement. "A 400 lb dog is a damm big dog"

 

[Taylortractornut]

The biggest ones Ive worked on came from the Lock on the Tenn Tom Waterway. the ram was 2 foot in diameter and the piston was 4 feet the barrel was about 35 feet long. I cant remeber the weight of the monster but TVA brought us a lift to get it in the shop. I may cut my cylinder down ad remachine it and make 2 good sized cylinders .

 

[Villengineer]

Big cylinders, now this is something I know a thing or two about. I used to design very large cylinders. The largest dia/stroke combination were 24" OD rods (singe acting, no piston) at 42' (yes feet) of stroke, 52' OAL. They hung over the trailer on both ends. The next biggest combo if I recall correctly were 36" OD rods at 25' of stroke. Got to work with a lot of neat people and go to a lot of cool places to supervise the installation with that job.

 

[Darren]

Taylor, the biggest cylinder I ever saw was, and probably still is, in the basement of a supply house in Vicksburg, MS. The diameter was around 4'. The length was at least 16' or longer. The cylinder was mounted horizontally on the basement floor and using water from the supply main, as the hydraulic fluid, it ran the freight elevator through a wire rope and pulley system.

 

[Taylortractornut]

VillageEng. What were the cylinder used for, My brother works in an eviden warehouse where an early hydraulics company had a shop in the 40's. The old man that owned the hydraulics shop built and all hydraulic lift to reach the top floor only 2 stories but it was about 30 feet of lift. It has a no piston either. One thing is you can see tinylines where joints were welded evey 5 feet. It was all polished together.
Darren, what building was that cylinder in Vicksburg, It wasnt Letourneau was it? There was a fella a few years ago in a factory where a friend worked and they pressed plates but the plant was spending several thousand a year in hydraulic fluid because of leaks and couldnt down the plant to fix the 3 foot by 5 foot cylinders.They were stainlsses so the maintenance man proposed if he solved the problem cheaply that he would make 10percent of the savings. He built a tank to hold the required water and modified the pumps. all the leaks run down the drai nto a sump and gets recycled again. Hes also a very well off fella.

 

[Villengineer]

The 4 52'ers are at UL Labs in Chicago. They move a very large false ceiling (I believe that its something like 100'x100') used to test fire suppression systems. They set the ceiling at about 6' to arrange the system then raise it up to the test height. They then arrange a store or warehouse under it, set it on fire, and see what happens. The other really big one is used to cast aluminum billet vertically. We did a lot of assembly line lifts, theater lifts, furnace lifts, and special lifts for the entertainment industry.

 

[SPIKER]

One of the copmanies near here builds cylinders, from scratch, they make mostly fork lift/truck booms, from about 4" dia x 20' all way up to 36" dia X xx' they make multi stage ones as well as single stage ones. company called Custom Hoist in Haysville Oh.) we built some sliding gaurds so that when they test booms fully extended and pressurised at 2500/3000 normal working pressure, well they test them at 5000 I belive and every now and then one would/will blow. so they had us construct gaurds that would encase the testing equipment but not interfear too bad.

Was a very cool machine they have to polishing/boaring all in one stroke. a 4" dia cyl wall it boars & polishes at about 2 ' er min.!

Mark M /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif

 

[Darren]

Taylor, the building is in downtown Vicksburg. In the early eighties it was a plumbing supply house. That's the last time I was in the place. One of the counter guys took me down into the basement to make sure he got the right fitting. You couldn't miss the cylinder. It took up a big chunk of the basement alongside the steps.

The cylinder must have been installed while the building was under construction. I'm guessing that would have been in the early 1900's. FWIW, LeTourneau is south of the city about a third of the way to Port Gibson.