TARGET 150304

The Making of a Machine Part

^{Getting metal ready to form.}

Baimaksky casting and mechanical plant has been operating in Bashkortostan, Russia since it was under tsarist rule. They used to smelt copper but in 1957 the plant started to work in the machine building sphere. Today they produce sand and soil pumps which are used in the mining industry. The purpose of the pumps is to transport and enrich ore.

^{Production starts in the wood-working shop.}

In order to cast something in molten metal, you must first have a mold to pour the metal into. The making of these large machines begins, then, with a wood carver. He cuts the wooden model to the shape of the piece to be molded. Wood turners are real professionals here, because the wooden model is made slightly larger so the metal piece can later be honed and polished down to the highly exacting measurements required to make a smooth running machine.


^{One worker's job is to bring sand for molds of future pumps and coal to the furnaces to smelt the metal.}

The wooden model will be put into a large container and wet sand packed tightly around it. The sand forms to the shape of the wooden model, and there you have a mold. But wait... the mold is now filled with the wooden model. How do you get the wooden model out of the mold?


^{That's where this guy comes in.}

While the mold is being made and the wet sand drying, metal is being smelted in a furnace elsewhere in the plant. It is melted to a temperature of 1500 degrees Celsius (2732 degrees Fahrenheit). That's 1/4 the temperature of the surface of the sun.


^{He burns it out.}

The mold has been made with several holes in the sand, each leading down to the wooden model. The worker brings the large kettle of molten metal along an overhead track that runs from the furnace to the mold. As he pours metal into one of the holes, the wood burns, with the gases and flames escaping through the other holes. Any ashes that form float to the top of the metal and escape through the same holes. This process is an amazing sight to watch in action, and may be one of the major attractors for people remote viewing this target.


^{Working a piece while it is still hot}

The molds can sometimes misform during the pouring of the hot, heavy metal, so the models must be checked for correct size and shape, as well as inclusions in the metal, such as imbedded ashes or air bubbles. The checking must be done while the metal is still hot, so as soon as the metal cools enough to become solid, the sand is broken away from it and it is delivered to the quality control workers. The picture above shows a worker making sure that a small metal casting is the right shape, but the same job must be done on larger pieces, too - some as large as the person working on them, and still radiating thousand-degree heat.


^{Coarse refining to shape}

Once the piece cools, it goes through coarse machining in order to get it into the proper shape and size for final tooling.


^{Final refining to exacting dimensions}

Then, it is machined to its final size within tolerances of thousands of an inch before being ready to be assembled into the final machine. Each part undergoes this whole process in order to make quality pumps that will give years of good, problem-free service.



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