2 November 2020

How metal bending built the Titanic and other great liners

By ruiiid5

There aren’t many people in the world who are not aware of the tale of the ill fated Titanic. This was the supposedly unsinkable ship (it was fitted with a great many bulkheads and watertight compartments designed to stop this from happening). However the collision with a huge iceberg ripping its sides open soon put paid to this and the ship sank. It was built along with many others of the White Star line in the shipyards of Harland and Wolff in Northern Ireland. One of the most interesting aspects of it is that it was one of the first to benefit from a new process, the process of metal bending.

Image credit

 

We now take metal bending machines for granted. Modern machines such as the Euromac Bending Machines that are available from Cotswold Machinery Sales. These machines can create precise bends for the largest and smallest jobs and with great precision as the industry demands it.

Image credit

 

For the Liners to be fast and streamlined the panels that had to be fitted needed to be of a certain shape. Each large panel was curved and bent to make the ship literally cut through the rough waves of the Atlantic. One of the contributing factors to the ships sinking is that the Captain and the White Star officials wanted the ship to break the trans-Atlantic crossing record on its maiden voyage and so safety i.e. sailing through a known iceberg field at full steam ahead, was compromised.