04-29-2013, 07:37 PM
Agree with Tom. You should be good to go. If you wanted to test them, block up the ends and put a little pressure on the center. If they're cast, they'll crack easily. I don't mean so much that you bend them, but just enough to know they won't crack in two.
As always, safety glasses/shield wise during press work. You never know what's going to come flying out. It's pretty unnerving testing a newly built press. We built a rolling head straightening press at one shop I worked in. I designed it, and over calculated everything by a factor of 4, but even then, there was a bit of pucker as I watched the pressure gage go up to the 100 tons it was built for. Did fine though. Wish I had kept all my drawings. We used it to straighten some hollow mandrels up to about 8 feet long, so we sometimes (at first, anyway) ran a chain through the part in case it broke instead of bent. Never did have one break, so I suppose the heat treaters did the temper right.
As always, safety glasses/shield wise during press work. You never know what's going to come flying out. It's pretty unnerving testing a newly built press. We built a rolling head straightening press at one shop I worked in. I designed it, and over calculated everything by a factor of 4, but even then, there was a bit of pucker as I watched the pressure gage go up to the 100 tons it was built for. Did fine though. Wish I had kept all my drawings. We used it to straighten some hollow mandrels up to about 8 feet long, so we sometimes (at first, anyway) ran a chain through the part in case it broke instead of bent. Never did have one break, so I suppose the heat treaters did the temper right.