biggest casting you never heard of

[aostling]

Yesterday I visited the Arizona Mining and Mineral Museum, in Phoenix. Outside the building there is the bucket from a shovel used at the copper mine in Ray, Arizona. The plaque said that this bucket is a single casting, weighing 100,000 pounds. To keep pace with the increased size of the ore trucks, it was replaced by a larger bucket several years ago. The new bucket was made from welded steel plates.

It must have been a major undertaking, transporting this casting to the museum, and unloading it.

Is this 50-ton hunk the largest casting you have ever heard of?

[JCHannum]

Back in 1864, there was one 20" Rodman cannon cast. The four piece mold took 160,000" of iron to cast. The cannon was machined on a special lathe and final weight was 116,479#.

More details here;

http://www.cwartillery.org/ve/tjrodman.html

There were also three 20" Dahlgrens made in the same era, but they ended up less than 100,000"|# each.

[Elninio]

http://www.cfhi.com/yzwzen/list.asp?id=1686

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...v93/ai_3711873

[aostling]

http://www.cfhi.com/yzwzen/list.asp?id=1686

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...v93/ai_3711873

Okay, but these are cast ingots. Casting a desired final shape, like the shovel bucket (which has teeth on the leading edge) is an effort of a different sort. The bucket opening was about twelve feet square. If it was a sand casting, making the mold must have used a lot of wood in the pattern.