Yeah, this reminds me of when the Chinese started dumping cheep steel on the US, I had friends that built engines that purchased cranks. Absolute garbage, To this day, most of the Walmart imported steel products are still throw away.
Man that is nuts! A 6.5B project and you buy unknown steel? 32 of 96 rods fail! The Cal trans engineer sounds like a complete ass! Yield is low but ultimate strength is the same? Utter bs. They should just fire the devious ass. But they won't. Just retire him if the fucking bridge falls in the bay, with pension of course. On the MarAzul, the keel fins are structured of Chromoly 4130 steel. Twelve rods tie the fins mounting plates to the ballast hanging below on these 12 rods. Critical application and I did not buy these from India. The price was about 40% more but the first requirement was Made in USA. Germany or Sweden would be alright too, but nobody supplies stock stuff from there, US, India or China. Years ago it came from Japan but I think India and China have run them out of the cheap steel market. Stainless Steel. Holy hell you must watch what you get there and from where . Snap Shackles are used in several applications on the MarAzul. Made of 316 SS, and if you get these made in China, you have no idea what the load carrying capacity is. You can be sure it is not very much. I have never broken one made in the US of 316 SS. Can't say that of the other, several failed now. They were pretty cool when they first became available, nine bucks for one suitable for 1/2" Dacron line. As opposed to $25! But wow! If you can't trust them, nothing cool about that. Now there are no US suppliers for these, so I had to replace the Chinese stuff with others from England. Tariffs is not going to fix what has already been run out of business in this country. Correction. The Snap Shackles from England are actually from New Zealand. So US tariffs might not be entirely helping US industry only. But I can't see the global picture here.
I don't know what they are made of but there are steel pins on the frame machine where I used to work that are about 2, 2.5 inches in diameter. They are the pivot for the pulling towers and a hydraulic ram is used for power. Maybe 7 tons of force on a max pull? Anyway, one sheared off a few years ago and none of us had ever seen it happen. Looked like the pin had a flaw and it finally broke. At the county fair my wife wanted to go on an old ass ride where you hang suspended in a little cabin. Had what looked like the exact same pin. I passed.
Yes, I really really hate to see my young ones get on some of this shit they call rides. Especially the older stuff, as they just use it until it fails. Some of these should be forcible retired. And going back to what that Cal trans Engineer said that was so blatantly bad, the yield might be low but the ultimate strength is the same. Well think over your pin while I make a few points. Steel actually gets stronger with use over time, IF the yield in never exceeded. Yield is the stress point where the metal begins to deform. It can bend or flex to this point, stretch to this point and return to the original shape. If it stresses exceed the yield strength then it will permanently deform in shape. In either case, steel work hardens as it flex and be comes stronger, probable flexing less with the increased hardness but still returning to the original shape. Deforming it also gets harder but it does not return to the original shape of it's own metal memory. It is deformed back again by stresses and hardening some more. This process does not take long before it is too hard and cracks reducing the cross section of materials resisting the load until failure occurs catastrophically. Bang! It is also well know that even while staying within yield or plastic load flexing, and the associated hardening, there is a cycle life to this process where too many cycles will harden the steel to the cracking point. So it is a matter of time and how rapid the cycles occur. Cycle once a day, probably Centuries of duty, but 5 a second and you better predict the failure time and replace well prior to that. Variations in between. You have no doubt used this before, bending a hunk of wire back and forth until you break off a length.
That's not exactly fair, Marzy. Aluminum used to do most of their smelting when we had lots of water and when other demands were low, such as weekends and at night. Now, we've got Global Warming and less snow pack resulting in less water. Also, Eastern Oregon now consumes about 80% of the water withdrawn from our rivers which again means less water. Water is what drives our electricity. No water means higher rates. It's Econ 101, which I took. Easiest class I ever took.
Marzy, my nephew-in-law used to work extensively in China. I heard many horror stories about their quality. My wife and I buy nothing from China unless it's third party as part of something assembled elsewhere and we don't know it. If there's a fabulous car that we find is made of Chinese steel, we'll buy something else.
Do it all the time. Drill off a panel that is spot welded and there are a few pieces of weld left. I also have to be aware of heating anything while repairing it.
That doesn't make much sense. How does the US imposing tariffs help a Costa Rican steel company? barfo
Probably no similarities... Softwood lumber prices in the U.S. soared to near-record highs Wednesday, as Canadian producers passed on higher export duties charged by the U.S. government straight on to American consumers. https://www.google.ca/amp/business....s-pass-on-slapped-duties-to-u-s-consumers/amp
Oh, I think it is pretty accurate. Econ 101 comes in as to how the BPA run the Aluminum industry out. They raised there rate too fucking high to usable for smelting Aluminum. Now it gets worse here, you are speaking to an old sailor, was up the river last year during spring run off. It still runs above flood stage like it always has. I also worked with the Corps back in my days in Portland. The river flow tracking system was set up then. I pop over to the Corps to see how the River flows are actually doing. "“The dams in the reservoir system are operating as designed,” said Steve Barton, Chief of the U.S Army Corps of Engineers Columbia Basin Water Management Division. “To meet flood risk management requirements for the spring runoff, about 3 million acre-feet of water must be released from the storage dams by April 30. This is enough water to cover the state of Massachusetts in about 6 inches of water.” How these releases impact river stages will largely depend upon weather and snowmelt." Yep the river is still flowing like hell much of the time. The Aluminum smelter only ever worked when the flows were high. Those smelter only received power from dam turbines, they never ran when other power sources were needed to support the load on the BPA grid. Geez! one smelter pot was like a short circuit. The bus bar running down to anode in the pot were huge copper bars, not wire. So, the river flows really heavy 5 to 6 months of the year, the first part of the year, to get ready for spring run off, then until about July something to handle the run off. We ain't doing Jack with the excess capacity during this time. http://www.nwd.usace.army.mil/Media...r-and-manage-columbia-basin-river-and-reserv/
I agree. But the problem is, so much stuff is just not available from this country anymore, they have already been displaced for one reason or another. And as you point out, like in my case about buying snap shackles for England or New Zealand, where are they getting the materials? I think New Zealanders are smart enough to use their natural resources to continue producing quality stuff at competitive prices. But I do not know it.
Well perhaps we may start process some of the logs we ship out of Oregon now. Damn near all of the shipping leaving Oregon is either logs or chips. You see this out of all the ports on the Oregon coast. Columbia, New Port, Coos Bay. Southern Washington too. It sort of makes me sick to see this and just how dumb it is.
uh, I imagine that gets tricky with unevenly work hardened steel. I sure am no expert, so I just give up quickly sometime and start over with new steel. Lack the skill level to do otherwise.
