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Tennessee's Largest Forging Press Delivered to Nissan's Engine Plant


March 2006
 Filed under: NISSAN Car News | NISSAN Headlines

New crankshaft forging press weighs as much as 400 Nissan Titan trucks

March 27, 2006

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Weighing in at over two million pounds, measuring 24 feet wide and 27 feet long fully assembled, the new forging press at Nissan North America’s Decherd Powertrain Assembly Plant is the largest forging press in Tennessee.
The 6500-ton forging press will be used at the plant’s new crankshaft forging facility, which is scheduled to begin production in the fall. At full capacity, the facility will produce one million crankshaft forgings annually for the engines manufactured in Decherd for all Nissan and Infiniti vehicles built at the company’s vehicle assembly plants in Smyrna, Tenn., and Canton, Miss. Forgings will also be exported to Nissan’s vehicle assembly plant in Aguascalientes, Mexico.

In late January the crankshaft forging press started its journey by ship in Osaka, Japan, and arrived in New Orleans six weeks later. Welded in place on its barge, the largest press components traveled up the Mississippi River to the Ohio River, making the final leg of its journey via the Cumberland River into Nashville. In the heaviest of eight shipments, the press arrived in Nashville today.

The press will be unloaded from the barge today onto a 160-ton dual lane transporter truck measuring 220 feet long and 20 feet wide for transport from downtown Nashville to Decherd. The trip, directed by the Tennessee Department of Transportation, will cover approximately 100 miles and is expected to take eight to 10 hours.

When the press arrives at the Decherd plant on Tuesday, a 600-ton gantry crane will unload it from the delivery trailer. Another 600-ton gantry crane will pick up the press and set it into a prepared pit inside the new 63,000-square-foot forging facility. Forty-two inches of concrete with two layers of rebar supported by 20 caissons drilled into bedrock serve as the foundation for the press. An isolation frame with 20 spring- viscodampers will isolate and cushion the press protecting the surrounding environment once operation begins.

The enormous forging press is central to the crankshaft production process. First, steel billets are heated to approximately 2200 degrees Fahrenheit and loaded into the forging press. The billet goes through three hot-forging processes to form the basic shape of the crank. After the excess metal is trimmed away, the crankshaft is transferred by robot to a 400-ton hydraulic twisting and hot coining press to be sized for inline 4-cyclinder, V6 or V8 crankshafts. The finished crankshaft is then control cooled and loaded onto a pallet for delivery to the on-site engine machining department or to Nissan Mexicana.

The new forging facility is located on the northeast side of the current Decherd facility, adjacent to the engine machining plant and connected via a corridor. The 63,000-square-foot addition brings the Powertrain Assembly Plant footprint to over 1 million square feet. Nissan North America is investing $48 million in the crankshaft forging operation, bringing total capital investment in the Decherd plant to $648 million. The forging operation requires about 50-60 employees.

About Decherd Powertrain Assembly Plant
Construction of the Decherd Powertrain Assembly Plant began in March 1995, and production started in May 1997 with 200 employees. Today, the work force has grown to 1,300 employees, making the plant the largest private employer in Franklin County. The plant, which has been expanded three times since it opened, is situated on a 968-acre site. Decherd Powertrain Assembly has the capacity to build 950,000 engines, 300,000 transaxles and, by this fall, one million crankshafts annually.

In May 1999, the Decherd plant became the first Nissan manufacturing facility in North America to be certified to the ISO 9000 standard, an internationally recognized standard of quality.

Nissan’s 3.5-liter VQ V6 engine, which is built in Decherd, was named to the annual “Ward’s 10 Best Engines for 2006,” marking the 12th straight year this engine has garnered the award. Nissan’s VQ V6 is the only engine that has been on the list every year the award has been presented.

About Nissan North America, Inc.
In North America, Nissan’s operations include automotive styling, engineering, consumer and corporate financing, sales and marketing, distribution and manufacturing. For information on Nissan and the complete line of Nissan and Infiniti vehicles, visit www.NissanUSA.com and www.infiniti.com.

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