The worlds largest all-forged steel hydraulic press stands over 60 foot tall, weighs 2,650 tons and can exert a pressure of 40,000 tons.

The press is used by Shultz Steel of South Gate, California, USA for pressing components for submarines, airplanes, rockets and missiles.  The press which cost $30 million to build is an important part of Shultz Steels $62 million expansion program that will put the company as a world leader in the manufacture of pressed steel fittings.

The press itself is made entirely from forged steel to give it super strength for the work at hand.  It is understood in engineering that forged steel is amongst the strongest type of steel that can be made as it can withstand much greater forces and pressure.

The 40,000 ton press needs a lot of power to operate and it gets this power from 12 engines that each deliver 1250 hp which renders a total of 15,000hp to apply over 3 tons per square inch of pressing power.

The press applies fantastic amounts of sheer brute force to get the job done, but all this force is very accurately applied to the job with a tolerance of 4 hundredths of an inch.  This allows a certain amount of intricacy so that all parts are made to exacting dimensions and very little work needs to be done on the finished item when it comes out of the press.

This giant press is essential in the manufacturing of such things as aircraft landing gear, structural supports and other stress bearing items that have to be made out of a single solid piece of steel.  When an object is made out of a solid piece of steel there are no seams, or welds that are essentially the "weakest link " in any manufactured item, and any weaknesses can break or split when under stress that is exerted during its lifetime.

Such is the power of this press that it can forge together different alloys into a single solid seamless mass, the 40,000 ton press forces metal alloys into a forge that exerts so much pressure that the parts become incredibly hard and resilient to failure through metal fatigue.

The parts that the press produce will last the entire life of the vehicle that it goes into.  The life of the part is estimated at over 50 years of constant use.

The 40,000 ton press sits alongside an existing 28,000 ton press (seen below) that Shultz Steel already owns and are amongst the largest of their kind anywhere in the world.

These presses are the largest in the world with their direct driven hydraulic oil systems they can compress billets of steel down to almost any thickness.

Presses like these are more than up to the job to do these tasks and many more that help to create a safer world where lives depend upon metals that must never fail under stress or fatigue.