What is the introduction of hydraulic press?

English inventor (1748-1814)

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Joseph Bramah (13 April 1748[1] – 9 December 1814) was an English inventor and locksmith. He is best known for having improved the flush toilet and inventing the hydraulic press. Along with William Armstrong, 1st Baron Armstrong, he can be considered one of the two fathers of hydraulic engineering.

Early life

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Joseph Bramah was the second son in the family of Joseph Bramma (note the different spelling of the surname), a farmer, and his wife, Mary Denton.[2] He was educated at the local school in Silkstone in South Yorkshire, and on leaving school he was apprenticed to a local carpenter. On completing his apprenticeship he moved to London, where he started work as a cabinet-maker. In 1783 he married Mary Lawton of Mapplewell, near Barnsley, and the couple set up home in London. They subsequently had a daughter and four sons. The couple lived first at 124 Piccadilly, but later moved to Eaton Street, Pimlico.

Improved water closet

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In London, Bramah worked for a Mr Allen, installing water closets (toilets) which were designed to a patent obtained by Alexander Cumming in 1775. He found that the current model being installed in London houses had a tendency to freeze in cold weather. Although it was Allen who improved the design by replacing the usual slide valve with a hinged flap that sealed the bottom of the bowl, Bramah obtained the patent for it in 1778,[3] and began making toilets at a workshop in Denmark Street, St Giles.

Bramah Locks company

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After attending some lectures on technical aspects of locks, Bramah designed a lock of his own, receiving a patent for it in 1784. In the same year he started the Bramah Locks company at 124 Piccadilly, which is today based in Fitzrovia, London and Romford, Essex.[4]

The locks produced by his company were famed for their resistance to lock picking and tampering, and the company famously had a "Challenge Lock" displayed in the window of their London shop from 1790 mounted on a board containing the inscription:

The artist who can make an instrument that will pick or open this lock shall receive 200 guineas the moment it is produced.

The challenge stood for over 67 years until, at the Great Exhibition of 1851, the American locksmith Alfred Charles Hobbs was able to open the lock and, following some argument about the circumstances under which he had opened it, was awarded the prize. Hobbs' attempt required some 51 hours, spread over 16 days.

The Challenge Lock is in the Science Museum in London. An examination of the lock shows that it has been rebuilt since Hobbs picked it. Originally it had 18 iron slides and 1 central spring; it now has 13 steel slides, each with its own spring.

Bramah received a second patent for a lock design in 1798.

Partly due to the precision requirements of his locks, Bramah spent much time developing machine tools to assist manufacturing processes. He relied heavily on the expertise of Henry Maudslay whom he employed in his workshop from the age of 18. Between them they created a number of innovative machines that made the production of Bramah's locks more efficient, and were applicable to other fields of manufacture.[5]

Just before Bramah died, his workshops also employed Joseph Clement who among other things made several contributions in the field of lathe design.

Hydraulic press

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Bramah's most important invention was the hydraulic press. The hydraulic press depends on Pascal's principle, that pressure change throughout a closed system is constant. The press had two cylinders and pistons of different cross-sectional areas. If a force was exerted on the smaller piston, this would be translated into a larger force on the larger piston. The difference in the two forces would be proportional to the difference in area of the two pistons. In effect the cylinders act in a similar way that a lever is used to increase the force exerted. Bramah was granted a patent for his hydraulic press in 1795.

Bramah's hydraulic press had many industrial applications and still does today. At the time Bramah was bringing his concepts to fruition, the field of hydraulic engineering was an almost unknown science. Bramah and William Armstrong, 1st Baron Armstrong were the two pioneers in the field.

The hydraulic press is still known as the Bramah Press after its inventor.

Other inventions

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Bramah was a very prolific inventor, though not all of his inventions were as important as his hydraulic press. They included: a beer engine (1797), a planing machine (1802), a paper-making machine (1805), a machine for automatically printing bank notes with sequential serial numbers (1806), and a machine for making quill pen nibs (1809). He also patented the first extrusion process for making lead pipes and also machinery for making gun stocks (Patent No. 2652).[6] His greatest contribution to engineering was his insistence on quality control. He realised that for engines to succeed, they would have to be machined to a much better standard than was the practice. He taught the Cornish engineer Arthur Woolf to machine engines to a close tolerance. This enabled Cornish engines to run with high-pressure steam, vastly increasing their output. Woolf became the leading Cornish steam engineer and his designs were adopted by all the engine designers of the day. The 15-HP engines of Watt and others of circa 1800 gave way to 450-HP engines by 1835. Bramah can be viewed as a founding father in industrial quality control.

Death and legacy

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One of Bramah's last inventions was a hydrostatic press capable of uprooting trees. This was put to work at Holt Forest in Hampshire. While superintending this work Bramah caught a cold, which developed into pneumonia. He died at Holt Forest on 9 December 1814. He was buried in the churchyard of St Mary's, Paddington.

The Brazilian Brahma beer brand is named for him.[7] In 2006, a pub in Barnsley town centre was opened named the Joseph Bramah in his memory.[8]

Patents

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Bramah was a prolific inventor, and obtained 18 patents for his designs between 1778 and 1812.[3]

1778

Flushing toilet (Pat. No. 1177)[9]

21 August 1784[10]

Bramah lock (Pat. No. 1430)[11]

9 May 1785

Beer pump

1785

Hydrostatical machine and boiler, propelling vessels, carriages, etc. (Pat. No. 1478)[12]

1790

Rotary engines (with Thomas Dickinson) (Pat. No. 1720)

1793

Fire engines (Pat. No. 1948)

Beer engines and brewing (Pat. No. 2196)

1795

Hydraulic press (Pat. No. 2045)[13]

1796

First Pumper Fire Truck

1798

Locks (Pat. No. 2232)

1802

A planing machine for making gun stocks (Pat. No. 2652)

1805

Improvements to paper manufacture and printing (Pat. No. 2840)

1806

Printing and numbering of banknotes (Pat. No. 2957)

Improvements to paper manufacture and printing (Pat. No. 2977)

1809

Pens (Pat. No. 3260)

Carriages (Pat. No. 3270)

1812

Public water mains and high-pressure hydraulic mains (Pat. No. 3611)

Carriages (Pat. No. 3616)

References

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Bibliography

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• Sir Alec Skempton; et al. (2002). A Biographical Dictionary of Civil Engineers in Great Britain and Ireland: Vol 1: 1500 to 1830. Thomas Telford. ISBN 0-7277-2939-X.

Machine press using a hydraulic cylinder to generate a compressive force

A hydraulic press is a machine press using a hydraulic cylinder to generate a compressive force.[1] It uses the hydraulic equivalent of a mechanical lever, and was also known as a Bramah press after the inventor, Joseph Bramah, of England.[2] He invented and was issued a patent on this press in 1795. As Bramah (who is also known for his development of the flush toilet) installed toilets, he studied the existing literature on the motion of fluids and put this knowledge into the development of the press.[3]

Main principle

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The hydraulic press depends on Pascal's principle. The pressure throughout a closed system is constant. One part of the system is a piston acting as a pump, with a modest mechanical force acting on a small cross-sectional area; the other part is a piston with a larger area which generates a correspondingly large mechanical force. Only small-diameter tubing (which more easily resists pressure) is needed if the pump is separated from the press cylinder.

Application

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Hydraulic presses are commonly used for assembly and disassembly of tightly-fitting components. In manufacturing, they are used for forging, clinching, molding, blanking, punching, deep drawing, and metal forming operations. Hydraulic presses are also used for stretch forming, rubber pad forming, and powder compacting.[4][5] The hydraulic press is advantageous in manufacturing, it gives the ability to create more intricate shapes and can be economical with materials.[6] A hydraulic press will take up less space compared to a mechanical press of the same capability.[7]

In geology a tungsten carbide coated hydraulic press is used in the rock crushing stage of preparing samples for geochemical analyses in topics such as understanding the origins of volcanism.[8]

In popular culture

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The room featured in Fermat's Room has a design similar to that of a hydraulic press.[9] Boris Artzybasheff also created a drawing of a hydraulic press, in which the press was created out of the shape of a robot.

In 2015, the Hydraulic Press Channel, a YouTube channel dedicated to crushing objects with a hydraulic press, was created by Lauri Vuohensilta, a factory owner from Tampere, Finland.[10] The Hydraulic Press Channel has since grown to over 9 million subscribers on YouTube. There are numerous other YouTube channels that publish videos involving hydraulic presses that are tasked with crushing many different items, such as bowling balls, soda cans, plastic toys, and metal tools.

A hydraulic press features prominently in the Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb".

See also

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References

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Media related to Hydraulic presses at Wikimedia Commons

For more information, please visit How Hydraulic Press Works.