Volume Eleven - Pre-Victorian to the Present Day - some more aspects - Large Testing Machines in South Wales, 1829-1906 . . .

It is a curious coincidence that the machine of 1829 had the straining shackle free to rebound on the rupture of the specimen, while the lower system remained undisturbed owing to its being at the same end of the stationary part of the machine. Similarly, in this machine of 1906, the levers are mounted on the stationary part of the machine, and the straining crosshead is free to rebound without chattering the knife-edges.

Fig. 7 - General View of 350-ton Horizontal Testing Machine, Lloyd's Bute Proving House, Cardiff. [198] [716]

Imagine the water in the cylinder compressed to one ton per inch and a hard specimen fracturing suddenly, then the elastic compression of the water and the elastic recovery of the containing vessels tend to shoot the ram out of the cylinder. The design of the machine is such that all statical stresses are self-contained between the cylinder and the sliding bed, and are taken symmetrically along the centre of gravity of the sections.