Introduction and Part1

Based  on my lifetime experience in metal fabrication and industrial installation around the world,  the last 32 years before my retirement spent in working for a large manufacturer of heavy metal components in the departments of paper, mining and Hydraulic turbines, I am ready to discuss new proposals in aiming to improving the quality of manufacturing these components and even saving fabrication time in some of them.

The positions I have held in that last period were quality control inspector in the shop and abroad and technical director in the installation of grinding mills for the mining department.

I am not looking forward to a long time position but only to help interested parties to implement my proposals. These proposals are mostly related to customer concerns, to the solution of some of the problems, to introduce new measuring tools as well as determining the source of some others.

In order to avoid a long and tiring text, I divide it in shorter parts, learning the francis type turbine last. The last part involves most of my recommendations and is based on the user’s concern of having a mostly uniform and smoothly running machine,increasing the output and life of the part.

Part 1: Measuring of a large taper

Around the end off the decade of 1970 or the beginning of 1980 I travelled to Arkansas to measure the tapered head of a paper mill since we were making a replacement. In our practice at that time we were strapping a sine bar piece in line with the axis of the part and if the measurement was the same on both ends, the taper part was to our standard. However, the old piece was made by another company whose standards were different you ours. However, the previous company machined two groves at a certain distance along the taper and measured it at the edges of the groves.

But the need to measure any type of taper without groves prompted me to device a method based on the fact that if a measurement is taken on two balls of the same diameter and known distance between them, and  at  90 degrees to the opposite surface, the measured size is unique. By using simple trigonometry, the taper of the piece may be derived, This method became quite useful in measuring the taper on turbine shafts and runner hubs and saved considerable amount of time in achieving the required portion of surface contact between shaft and hub in a series of an order on tapered shafts and runner hubs.

Part 2 Alining motors to gear boxes

I worked in aligning motors to gear boxes on a large lamination plant in Brazil in 1962. At that time I followed the existing practice which today I consider wrong. Of course the platt worked but I suppose that it could have a longer and smoother life if it was done properly.

It is easy to explain by installing a dial indicator on a magnetic base, Then set the indicator to 0 while on the top of the pipe. No matter how tight the rods are on the magnetic base, by turning the pipe such as the dial indicator is at the bottom, the reading will not be the same. The further the dial indicator is from the magnetic block of the base,  the larger will be the difference, this is something that even many  qualified technicians afe not aware of. In the case of Brazil, it was even worse since the dial indicator was set on a flexible bracket around the coupling.