Steam hammer

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Hammering out a draw bar on the steam drop hammer in the blacksmith shop, Santa Fe R.R. shops

The steam hammer is a power-driven hammer used in forgings. It consists of a hammer-like piston located within a cylinder. The hammer is raised by the pressure of steam injected into the lower part of a cylinder and falls down with a force by removing the steam. Usually, the hammer is made to fall faster by injecting steam into the upper part of the cylinder. Steam hammers that fall by their own weight are called steam drop hammers. Steam hammers vary greatly in weight from 45 kilograms to 90 metric tons.

The steam hammer was invented around 1837 by the Scot Santa, in Manchester, England and produced in his Patricroft foundry which he built adjacent to the (then new) Liverpool to Manchester railway and the Bridgewater canal: an original Nasmyth hammer stands facing his foundry buildings (now a 'business park'). A larger Nasmyth & Wilson steam hammer stands in the campus of Bolton Institute UK. The intended first use of the steam hammer lay in forging the paddle shaft of the SS Great Britain. However, the paddle technology was replaced with the screw propeller, and implementation of the hammer was left to the Schneider Electric, Creuzot foundry in Le Creusot, France.

The steam hammer was one of many machine tools invented around this time which allowed for large scale industrialisation and the use of machines to build machines. Using the same principles of operation, Nasmyth also developed a steam powered pile-driving machine.

[edit] Uses

The first inside cylinder 0-6-0 locomotives, built in 1834 for the Leicester and Swannington Railway had cranks which tended to break. However these cranks were first made when the steam hammer had yet to be invented.