Stories of visits to great manufacturing facilities

[Joe in NH]

One of the jobs I worked at was filling in the "Cooling Canal" at Brayton Point Station.

The original Brayton Point was twin 150MW GE Units finished in 1963. These were unusual in both units being "cross-compound" where the HP and IP turbine were tandem-compound on one spindle/generator, and two LP turbines tandem-compound on another spindle/generator. Startup was interesting as the HP-IP turbine would be started and brought up a speed, and then the two LP turbines would then be "motored" using the HP-IP as power source. The unit could then be brought up to line synchrony together as one single turbine - but actually two turbines but electrically inter-connected.

These units were ROCK SOLID and spent most of their life on earth before Toyota at 175MW.

Unit 3 at about 675MW was added in the late 1960s being the Supercritical unit I mentioned.

All these units were designed for coal, burned coal for a good portion of their lives, but at various times depending on the oil market COULD burn No. 6 fuel oil.

Unit 4 was a Westinghouse unit, but made for "peaking" service. A durable beast it could take the licking that rapid load changes and trips could dish out. It was not so efficient - and burned oil only as fuel. To be used only on those hot summer days, cold winter nights, or when the grid demanded quick coverage. The unit was like zero to full load in 2 hours. The other three units would be most of a day getting to full load.

As Unit 4 was added (1974) the EPA became a motivating force. Suddenly one's thermal emission became a problem and for years residents of Mount Hope Bay complained that the bay "never seemed to freeze" anymore - as in there had been a change since Brayton point was built. The complaints both grew louder with someone to listen, and as Unit 4 was added to the bay heat load.

By the mid 1980s, the power company threw a bone to the EPA and built what was termed a Cooling Canal for Unit 4. This would make Unit 4 a closed thermal cycle. The canal had "spray modules" which would aerate the cooling water using the air. Originally designed for salt water which is plentiful, it was later decided to be maintenance advantageous to close in the canal and use fresh water.

By the late 1990s, the canal was expensive to run and there were complaints about the "fog" they created. It was decided to fill in the canal and instead built two large 500' hyperbolic cooling towers.

It became my job to oversee filling in the canal. It took about 92 days, with (average) about 82 full loaded trucks per day dropped. I was bored out of my mind counting trucks. The weight was all being tallied but for some reason the power company didn't trust that ALL the trucks made it to the drop.

Randomly I would count - I set up a VHS video camera and recorded the dump scene at uber slow speed. Then, at the end of the day I would then play back the entire day at 3x speed and count the trucks. An entire day took about 20 minutes to review - and I could do it twice to be sure of the count.

About the time I left the power company, the hyperbolic towers were built and in operation - but the complaints didn't stop. Such is life in the utility.

One can see on Youtube the demolition of the towers. That IS impressive - but in a way heartbreaking as I did have a good portion of my heart into this power plant.

Brayton Point Power Plant Cooling Towers - Controlled Demolition, Inc. - YouTube

It is best not to get too committed to things one has no control over. As Einstein said when he was queried about "the most powerful force." His reply? "the power of compound interest the most powerful force in the universe."

And power companies are ALL about return on equity. Providing power, providing jobs, or doing remarkable things with nature are just a side-line.

Joe in NH

 

[JST]

Not a factory, but pretty cool anyway.

Got to tour a nuclear power plant, and go everywhere, including the containment building.

This was many decades ago, the Monticello MN nuclear plant, which had public tours prior to loading the reactor. Way back before nuclear power became "evil" and super-secret.

We got to see the entire place, and even look into the reactor vessel, which was open, with the "training core" in place. The utility was eager to show it off, which tells you how long ago it was. No problems asking questions, they answered pretty much anything you asked.

Very interesting, and totally impossible nowadays.

 

[duckfarmer27]

One can see on Youtube the demolition of the towers. That IS impressive - but in a way heartbreaking as I did have a good portion of my heart into this power plant.

Joe -

Your stories, along with others, are great reading. And I understand - I have winced myself when seeing facilities disappear.

Only trouble is having spent that 'other career' as a combat engineer, I always appreciate good demo shots like that one.

These stories make my working life in aerospace pretty tame by comparison.

Dale

 

[Joe in NH]

One more power plant story and then I have to call it quits and let someone else tell their war stories.

It was perhaps 1985 and I was deep in the middle of the "engineering startup" of Seabrook Unit 1 - which was the primary reason I became "Joe in NH" shortly before.

I had several secondary plant systems on my startup work plate including Auxiliary Steam System, Steam Driven Feed Pump, condensate system up to the Deaerator, Turbine Lube Oil System. All quasi non-nuclear. This made sense because I had a steam background in fossil generation, and these systems were common to both types of plant.

The steam driven feed pump was interesting.

A little background. As designed, the nuclear containment building was penetrated by two 30 inch main steam lines one each on opposite sides of the dome.

Outside exposed to the weather on the way to the turbine building were connected two branch steam lines which fed the backup steam driven feed pump. Each had an explosive opening valve designed to suddenly open (1.5 sec) should there be a need to start the steam pump.

The pump itself consisted of a relatively small "Terry" type steam turbine direct connected to a conventional centrifugal pump. Not too large the pipes feeding the turbine were perhaps 8" in diameter necking down to 6" at the pump. And the turbine/pump about 2 feet across and 10 feet long. The Terry turbine exhausted to the air.

All designed as a water source to add water to a steam generator should the main electrical bus fail and the motor pumps be inoperable. Feeding the steam generator on a power failure was essential as a "last ditch heat release" for the nuclear core. Blowing steam to the condenser can remove the residual core heat and save a TMI type melt-down.

Something bothered me about the installation: the main steam lines were heavily insulated - this makes sense considering our freezing climate. But downstream of the explosive valve and feeding the pump there was NO insulation. As in COLD PIPE. And the pump turbine steam line was brought like this all the way up to the stop valve on the turbine. One imagines all that hot saturated steam hitting that cold pipe - and what would happen.

I did a little calculation: how much water would be condensed bringing that pipe up to operating temperature where the pipe equaled the temperature of the steam and condensation would be negligible? As it turned out with nearly 300 feet of 8" pipe, the weight of a Volkswagen Bug would be condensed as water - i.e. well beyond a thousand pounds/hundreds of gallons.

No means of separating the condensed water was designed. A couple of 3/4" hand drain valves. ALL that water would have to go through that bucket-bladed turbine on a start-up, before you get even a lick of steam. And this a system which is SUPPOSED to be ON DEMAND and UNSUPERVISED?

And prominent on the front page of the Terry-turbine starting instructions are the words "DO NOT SUBJECT THIS TURBINE TO ENTRAINED WATER IN THE STEAM SUPPLY - USE ONLY CLEAN, DRY STEAM FOR SUPPLY.

Oops!

In other words, this is a turbine which according to original United Engineers design would self-destruct promptly on initial start. It would kill the operator standing nearby. It would never make it to its intended purpose to protect the steam generator from low water on a major plant trip/shutdown/loss of electrical supply event.

The design was an accident waiting to grow worse.

I spoke to my Startup Supervisor and expressed my reservations with the design, my doubts about a successful startup, my concern with my personal safety. I got no support - he blew me off!

I spoke to HIS boss - again no support. Oh he fully understood the issue - but chose not to address it. He left me my only option - "You put in a 'Non-conformance Report'" which went directly to the NRC.

I like to sleep at night - and I don't like getting hurt - and I do live within a half-hour's drive from the plant. And thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people might be affected if that little simple turbine/pump should blow itself up. I filled out the NRC paper in private and attached my reference drawings. I became a "whistleblower!."

A week later I get called into the Vice President of Construction's Office. "Um, you know this will result in unacceptable delays to getting this plant on line and will cost the rate-payers MILLIONS of dollars to correct this issue?"

"Yes", I said.

"And you want to persist in this?"

"Yes I do,"

"Well the next person you will talk to on this will be the Resident NRC Inspector. Please keep what you've told me in confidence until then."

A week later I spoke to the NRC dude. He seemed sympathetic, reasonable, and agreed with my warning, and would take the issue under advisement with the NRC.

And there it seemed to end. For a week. The next week I found myself transferred out of Start-up forthwith, and assigned to the "Records and Document" Department where my task was - to correct coding sheets for equipment attributes for the National Nuclear Equipment Database kept in South Carolina. It was paperwork, busy-work, pure and simple. My nuclear start-up career had ended, but true to the typical form of these matters, I still had a job. Not a fun job, and raises henceforth would be purely cost of living adjustments. I was, in effect, sidelined.

I languished in this work or similar for another two years. Then, a plant operating opportunity opened up in a nearby fossil plant - and I made a switch of employers - and engineering path.

My career continued non-nuclear for the next 20 years. I worked through an additional two more operating plant entities and even survived "Deregulation" still with a utility before finally applying for employment with a major fortune 500 architect engineering firm who (get this) wanted engineers with "nuclear experience."

"I see from your resume you were a Startup Engineer at Seabrook. Can you tell me about your time there? What did you do and learn while you were there?"

I gave him the thumbnail version of my Startup career. No details.

"Well, you seem qualified for this job. Can you give me more in depth - you know, so I can see if you can identify and resolve engineering issues?" He was curious about me. I could tell.

I deferred for a minute. What if I tell him too much? I might not get this job. Then I said "what the heck!" You only live once. And I filled him in on my auxiliary steam driven feed pump debacle.

As I'm describing the story to him, his eyes are getting bigger, and his mouth is now hanging open.

As I concluded he said "THAT is quite a story. Tell me how you feel about it?"

I said "It was the right thing to do. I regret what it did to my startup/engineering career - but its not supposed to always be beer & skittles."

"Do you have any idea of what happened subsequently?"

"No."

"I'll tell you what happened - your Non-Conformance was examined by the NRC, and similar issues were found in no less than NINE United Engineers design nuclear plants nationwide. These have now all been corrected at the cost to United Engineers in millions if not hundreds of millions in malpractice suits or engineering changes forced by the NRC. I should really thank you as your Non-Conformance brought MILLIONS of dollars of work into this office, and has revolutionized how back-up nuclear systems are looked at in the industry."

He continued: "When can you start working for me? - I desperately NEED people who can do what you can do."

He says this and it is now 20 years past since I initially saw that issue with Seabrook Station Auxiliary Steam Driven Feed Pumps. I never knew. I never heard. And I was never consulted about a solution either.

At the time of the Seabrook turbine/pump I was simply someone in the way of completion of a major engineering construction - and someone they HAD to get out of the way so that plant could be built and the money made.

It is well we have an NRC.

I have often thought about how I might have played that Steam Driven Feed Pump issue to a better direction of my career. But for that issue of "hazarding the public" and how big an issue this turbine pump failure might become I might have simply "gone along to get along." But I might not sleep as well at night either.

There are no easy careers. And engineering is perhaps one of the less easy ones.

It certainly has been a "Nantucket Sleigh Ride" for me.

But I've learned a lot...

And there has been fun and adventure too.

And I haven't yet really cut the rope...

Joe in NH

 

[duckfarmer27]

One more power plant story and then I have to call it quits and let someone else tell their war stories.

Joe in NH

Joe -

Quite a story - and thank you. I don't believe you had Clint Renfrew for a prof, he retired between our dates on the Hill. He was the best in the department as far as what an engineer's professional responsibility should be in my time there. Had him for Thermo and Heat Transfer as well as machine design. He had worked in industry and had a few stories, although he was a quiet guy by nature, did not blow his own horn. I always figured he became a prof because of some of those experiences. One of my classmates happened to marry his daughter.

I retired earlier than planned as my last job was running a flight facility during the development phase of a program. Got to not be fun any more, even though the best job I ever had not wearing a uniform. I replaced my predecessor because of safety concerns that had us in trouble with the customer - Navy. Under the contract the customer had total liability in case of any incident/accident. The site assistant general manager, Peter, interviewed me for the job. He had had one development aircraft loss during his career and that is what we talked about. He knew me, sort of, although I had never worked for him. There was a VP being groomed to replace him and one other guy in the chain - they were told I was hired. Day after I was announced Peter calls a meeting with the three of us. Makes it clear I have total call on anything safety and am responsible only to him. The other two guys in the chain were not the type to like such a setup - my immediate boss told me he would not have hired me for the job. I was considered not malleable enough. Early on I shut a behind schedule over cost operation down because our partner firm violated major rules that could have resulted in death/fire/etc. but my techs caught it. Caused a major stink and Peter loved it as it got everyone's attention.

Successfully completed the development but along the way Peter retired. I ended up telling the other two to stick it more than once. I was asbestos but it took all the joy out having to fight them to take care of things. So I retired earlier than I might of, but no regrets at all now. The flight test circuit is right over my house and I just don't know the tail numbers in test any more. LOL.

I had responsibility for plenty of live fire exercises / demolitions / etc. while in uniform. Just thankful that all the people that trained me early on helped instill the right way to look at force protection/flight safety. It's easier to sleep at night not having had any Class A accidents in my careers, even though some parts of it are always out of our hands. Sometimes only the grace of God saves us.

Dale

 

[old_dave]

Back in the 1990's I toured Westinghouse Marine Division in Sunnyvale, California. This was through the Oakland Museum History Guild. The Westinghouse Marine Division plant started in 1906 as the Joshua Hendy Iron Works which moved to Sunnyvale from San Francisco after the earthquake. Westinghouse bought the operation after World War II. In 1996 they sold to the current owner, Northrop-Grumman. Lots of nifty large machine tools like big planer mills, the size you could ride on but probably shouldn't. At the time of the tour their main job was building gear boxes for the propulsion system of USS Ronald Reagan. Tour was very well done by retirees from the works. Of course no photographs were allowed. I'm sure post 9-11 there are also no more tours like that.

David

 

[Jim Christie]

I seem to remember reading one or more articles about the Hendy Iron works shipbuilding in Pacific Marine Review from the WW2 era .

I posted some links in post # 30 of this thread but I don't see the article I was thinking of there.

https://www.practicalmachinist.com/...11694/index2.html?highlight=Hendy#post2654968

In case someone is interested there are several volumes of this magazine on archive.org

Internet Archive Search: creator:"Pacific American Steamship Association"

If you search within them you may find some more on Hendy .

There are several hits in this volume

Pacific marine review

Regards,

Jim

 

[JST]

Never had any issues that big to make a call on, but at my previous long-term employer I had the nickname "the monkey wrench" for a reason.... If it didn't look like it was going to work, that's how I called it.

I probably called a few that were not that bad, but a few times I got over-ridden and there did in fact turn out to be problems. Eventually they got tired of saying "you don't KNOW that will happen", after if DID several times.

That never makes managers and bean counters happy, but it has to be done.

 

[Ries]

A bit more than ten years ago, I went on a trip to Italy with the Society for Industrial Archeology. We got into a lot of manufacturing faciities that are not open to the public.

Two of the most impressive were in the "Packaging Valley" of Bologna.

Italian factories are not the biggest- even their auto plants arent THAT big.
But they make amazing things, and they dont skimp on machinery, tooling, or quality of buildings.

We went to SACMI- you probably havent heard of it, but you have bought things made on machines they make. They are a family of 80 companies under the corporate umbrella, but the main factory we visited was not particularly huge. They were founded in 1919, and made tile presses for ceramic tiles in the beginning.
They still make a line of very advanced CNC presses for ceramics.
But one thing we saw while we were there was the test assembly of a machine that makes toilets- or, as they call it, sanitaryware.
They make and sell turnkey factories for ceramics. This was just one machine for such a factory. It would inject clay body into multi piece resin molds, at high pressure, then open the mold and a robot unloads them, passes them to a glaze spray booth, then another robot loads them into a kiln- tunnel kilns with little railway cars that run the ceramics thru 50 to 100 meter long tunnels.
Of course, they also sell molds to make sinks, tubs, and bidets.
Order them with automixers for clay, and you basically back a dump truck up to one end, and pack completely finished ceramics off the other.

Most machining was in house- a gigantic HBM, for example, with probably 15 meters of travel, rooms full of European and maybe a few japanese cncs.

Then, another wing where they do moldmaking for injection molding beverage caps- 48 plastic pop bottle lids from a water cooled mold. But that was just the mold shop- another plant we didnt visit makes the molding machines, as well as molding machines for bottles in plastic or glass.

All the shops were tidy, well lit, with very modern machines, and non-grumpy looking machinists.

They work closely with the technical college in Bologna, donating new machinery to the school, recommending course requirements, and then hiring graduates, usually for life.

The plant we were in still made the cnc presses for ceramic tile making- but another plant makes amazing presses for metal, for cold coining frying pans, for powdered metals, or just plain old 1000 ton 4 post presses.

Its just unbelievable the line of machines they make. All are impeccable- every detail is beautiful, usually industrial designers are involved to make them look as good as they work.

They have a good 20 or 30 vids on youtube, for a dozen different industries- here is a pretty cool one of a completely automated bottling line that spits out sealed cardboard boxes full of product at the end.
SACMI Complete Packaging Line for Bottling - YouTube

All in all- its just boggles the mind that the Italians, with all their problems, and high taxes, wages, and government rules, dominate this market. Sure, you can buy cheap chinese versions of some, but not all of their products. But the difference in quality, lifespan, and accuracy makes the Italians still sell a lot.

Here is a cool video of a tile factory in Loudon Tennessee- full of SACMI machines. The Most Modern Tile Factory in the World - YouTube

 

[adammil1]

Oops!

In other words, this is a turbine which according to original United Engineers design would self-destruct promptly on initial start. It would kill the operator standing nearby. It would never make it to its intended purpose to protect the steam generator from low water on a major plant trip/shutdown/loss of electrical supply event.

The design was an accident waiting to grow worse.

Joe in NH

Joe fascinating story but how does a mission critical device like that get away without ever being tested during startup and commissioning? One of the coolest sights I have seen my entire life was a steam blow on an 600MW powerplant boiler. I saw the first blow it looked something like this. Plum Point's very first steam blow .mpg - YouTube Except I was downwind of the cloud of crap that came out of the lines it practically turned the skies above us black above me. If ever in life I thought i was transported for a moment into Hell that was the moment! Between that and the noise being ear piercing even with both fingers jammed up into my ears after diving into my car it was nothing shy of awe inspiring (note yes we were warned to wear double hearing protection but it took place at shift change we were getting in the car to go back to the hotel and curious to see what happened we didn't think the noise could actually be that bad!)

At any rate for those who don't know what a steam blow is before you tie in the lines to a steam turbine you need to blow out all the crap, welding slag, mill scale, old welder's gloves and any other crap left in the pipe lines prior to startup. Wouldn't a line like that require blowing down with a good few blows, and then tie in to the turbine and final testing?

How do they actually do steam blows on a nuclear plant? I would assume it needs to be done but unlike a coal fired boiler where you can kill the fuel and probably somewhat harmlessly blowdown I would assume doing such on a nuclear reactor is somewhat different so what do they do there? Do they bring onsite large packaged boilers to create auxiliary startup steam, and perhaps even the main system?

Perhaps I am answering my own question here and it just isn't possible to test that device due to no spare steam but I would think a mission critical system like that should have a test ran where you explosively fire off the valve and spool up that turbine at least once to see that it can come online and work as intended? Wouldn't the NRC require such a test of anything you claimed would save the plant from meltdown?

The second most impressive facility on my list is the Sikorsky Factory in Stratford CT. Maybe if I am bored I will write some things about that one. The most memorable part of that plant to me is the door that leads to the test engineering laboratories. It is a giant 2 story garage door maybe 20ft wide from memory on it reads an Igor Sikorsky quote "One Test is Worth A Thousand Expert Opinions"

It is a phrase I have carried with me my whole engineering career. I can't tell you how many times I have worked on projects with other engineers, we all add to the design and then we get to the real world and a single test shows us something completely unexpected! I can't tell you how many times in starting up a new machine I am confident everything we have designed in the office is spot on correct only to find on that first test whoops something was missed be it in the design or on the shop floor.

It seems that if the the commissioning/licensing test plan required that turbine to be tested under real world conditions you would have been either been quickly vindicated when that Sperry turbine blew its self to pieces or convinced that it wasn't that dangerous after all.

On a funny note I recall seeing an engineer tell his stupid manager why it running a machine the way the dumb manager wanted it ran would destroy the machine and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage. The engineer told the manager that he would be happy to run the machine as is under the following circumstance. Said engineer would write him an email with all his concerns of potential damage and the manager would need to reply back and say i have heard your concerns but insist you run anyways. Needless to say the idiot backed down.

Too bad you couldn't have forced your startup supervisor to make you start that turbine as installed!

 

[Joe in NH]

I did one steam blow in my career at the William Wyman Station on Casco Bay in Maine. This a 680 MW oil fired "topping unit" (Similar to Brayton Pt. 4) which did it's startup about 1978. Planned and started before the 1973 Oil Embargo, by the time it was built it was already non-economical to run. I was loaned by my partner utility to be part of the start-up team for "experience." This shortly after the "Blizzard of '78" of some meteorological note.

A large "silencer" was built outside the turbine hall, and connecting piping to the turbine steam chest (A control valve assembly adjacent to the HP turbine cylinder.) The silencer about 10 feet in diameter and perhaps 20 feet tall, it stood on end with an open top, and was filled bottom to top with an internal structure of "perf-plate" - holes perhaps 1" diameter.

The steam blow was with boiler pressure perhaps 800 psi - and was officially monitored and recorded as 138 decibels - both earplugs (20db reduction) AND earmuffs (29db reduction) were worn by us monitoring it.

The blow blew most of the perf-plate out of the vessel. Most of it ended up out on the beach/shore of Casco Bay. We roped off an area about 2x a football field. "Maybe we should have done it at 600psi?" was the comment.

Only slightly later in my Seabrook nuclear experience, we did steam blow some smaller lines like the mentioned 8" feed to the SGFPT. But these were blown using auxiliary boiler steam (150psi), and using 4" flexible steam hose (pile driver hose) using the 30" Main Steam lines as a reservoir. This done by one of my Startup associates as I had by then been "lateral arabesqued."

The 30" Main Steam Lines from the steam generators were chemically cleaned and then "inspected" afterwards and lastly. AMAZING how quickly 24 inch schedule 40 steel pipe chemical return lines can be put up, hydro'ed, and then taken down.

The Seabrook Turbine "cross-arounds" (Two connection between the IP turbine and the LP turbines) was like 60 inches in diameter and chemically cleaned. I was tapped out of my paperwork job temporarily to do the final inspection of these after final cleaning. (I was actually a PSNH employee and as such I could be designated to speak for PSNH in a "final approval" to United Engineers. Funny how you can be of value one way but not another - depending on the dollars?)

This chemical cleaning modus seemed to become the industry standard. A fossil plant start-up I worked in 2010 in St. Paul Virginia (The Virginia City Hybrid Energy Center) did their cleaning chemically. The chemical cleaning was subcontracted to a firm who specializes in this sort of work. They had an entire waste treatment pond devoted exclusively to themselves for the neutralization/discharge.

Joe in NH

 

[jim rozen]

It is a phrase I have carried with me my whole engineering career. I can't tell you how many times I have worked on projects with other engineers, we all add to the design and then we get to the real world and a single test shows us something completely unexpected! ...

That's the original hubble telescope mirroro. Perkin Elmer decided to NOT do that simple test, because it would not be sensitive enough to show the predicted errors. OOps.

Seabrook, Joe - is that the plant with the famous lobsters in the intake trash racks?

 

[Joe in NH]

Seabrook, Joe - is that the plant with the famous lobsters in the intake trash racks?

It may be. Seabrook Station is remarkable for being "open cycle." Most power plants today are built with cooling towers - the environment, yunno. But Seabrook was the last of the open cycle plants allowed to be built.

Seabrook takes cooling water from "offshore" of Seabrook Beach. Underground tunnels bring water to the plant, and return it to the ocean about 1 mile offshore. I forget the total length of the two tunnels but it is like seven miles. The tunnels themselves were one of the few parts of the Seabrook job which came in ahead of schedule and under budget. Morrison-Knudsen should get the credit.

The tunnels are about 20 feet in diameter, bored in the solid rock, and lined with concrete. A railroad was actually built underground. I saw the locomotive moved down into the tunnel with a crane, done as a child would pick up a toy train and lower it into a hole picking it up by the coupler up-ended. At the bottom the loco was turned to its normal orientation to place it on the rails - and turn a corner formed where the vertical shaft connects to the horizontal.

When the tunnels were construction completed, the locomotive(s) were backed into a short side tunnel and bricked up in place. Somewhere 250feet below the surface and surrounded by seawater lies two small GMD units.

The intake structure is underwater and supposedly far enough below the surface to not impede surface boats - or suck up fish life. Lobsters ARE attracted to it, apparently due to the motion of the water which the lobsters find bring them their food of choice. There was quite a flack over the environmental damage to the ocean life - but the lobsters are just doing what lobsters do, and there is another layer of removal/traveling screens at the plant for those that get past the intake structure.

The discharge is underwater plastic pipe perhaps 18" diameter arranged "fork-like" underground and rising from the ocean floor. Perhaps 20 "spouts."

ANOTHER more publicly discussed insult to the environment occurred at PSNH Schiller Station. The trash racks there front directly on the Piscataqua River and they attract lobsters too. For those auxiliary operators, keeping the trash racks clear can be a major occupational headache.

One of the operators thought to augment his not too substantial income by removing and taking home live lobsters, and first "gifting" to friends and later "selling" those lobsters. Reportedly, the plant manager was on the take for these lobsters as well partaking in what they thought a "side benefit" of working long hours at not overly substantial pay.

Word got out and the employee was removed. Employee found with 500 pounds of lobster fired — BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE — Archive — BDN Maine

Company policy aside, it is a simple matter of a lunchbox and an idle hand who is not possibly even aware of a policy to treat himself to a New England delectable.

Most power plants are built in areas of fairly commercial interest - as in not too clean. And lobsters ARE the original "bottom feeders" noted for eating ANYTHING edible they find, dead or alive. I'm not sure I would want a lobster from a power plant intake. Some are not so picky.

Joe in NH

 

[jim rozen]

"Word got out and the employee was removed. Employee found with 500 pounds of lobster fired — BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE — Archive — BDN Maine"

THAT's the one! They were bringing trunkloads of lobsters out of the plant weekly I recall.

"Hey, what's in the trunk of your full-size american sedan?"

"oh, nothing!"

 

[DDoug]

The second most impressive facility on my list is the Sikorsky Factory in Stratford CT. Maybe if I am bored I will write some things about that one. The most memorable part of that plant to me is the door that leads to the test engineering laboratories. It is a giant 2 story garage door maybe 20ft wide from memory on it reads an Igor Sikorsky quote "One Test is Worth A Thousand Expert Opinions"

I read a book about one of the first helicopter pilots, and he ferried the copter back to the sikorsky
factory for service (was in the army IIRC)

He got to meet Igor personally, and the account was well written, and sounded very similar to yours.

 

[jczcpa]

In the middle 1990s I was able to tour the Bethlehem Steel plant in Bethlehem, PA. The original works. Much of it was in ruins as various buildings had been abandoned and left to sit. The open hearth furnaces were still there, inactive since the 1950s.

We were shown through the basic oxygen furnace which was amazing just for its scale. Everything was huge. We also saw the I Beam rolling mill, where all of the equipment was pre WW2. We watched a hunk of steel about the size of a medium car become an I beam about 200 feet long. Amazing thing to see run.

Overall, the place had a level of age and decay that forshadowed the companies bankruptcy some years later. It was evident that very little capital had been put into the facility since my Grandfather worked there shortly after the war. The newest thing was the basic oxygen furnace, which was probably 40 years old at the time.

Really cool to see the place, but depressing all the same.

 

[Ries]

Another factory I toured in Bologna was really interesting for the opposite reasons than you would think- Its a factory that makes a very expensive, high tech, high quality machine that everybody drools over- and there were hardly any manufacturing tools in the whole factory.

This was the Ducati Motorcycle factory.

The Bologna are has literally hundreds of small factories- and so, Ducati has a just in time plant, where they make almost nothing in house- basically its just a big assembly plant.

every morning, a truck pulls up with that day's build sheet of fully finished, painted frames. I believe they even have decals on them (stickers) in places that are difficult to access after assembly. Brembo has a couple of brake caliper factories less than a hundred miles away, trucks arrive just in time. Wheels come with tires and tubes already mounted.
The majority of the factory is workbenches on wheels with air tools and plastic bins, where different assembly tasks are done.

The one thing I saw they actually machined were the already incredibly jewel-like engine castings. They had a row of double pallet Chiron VMC's, and they did the final machining of the mating surfaces before they assembled the engines.

If Henry Ford wanted complete vertical manufacturing, where he owned the forests, the mines, the glass company, the foundries, and the steel mills, Ducati is an example of complete horizontal manufacturing. I know, companies like Toyota and Honda probably do this, but I think Ducati learned from them.

I kept looking around the factory for a spray booth, or a tube bender, or a lathe...

 

[Bob-O]

Back in late '77 or early '78 when I was still in college,I was a member of the NYIT's student chapter of the SAE. We went on a tour of the old GM assembly plant in Tarrytown, NY., on the banks of the Hudson River. It was quite impressive to see cars being assembled in real time.

A few years earlier, around '75, I toured the plant of the V&O Press Company in Hudson NY. My dad was the plant manager for a large metal stamping company. He was responsible for all capital equipment, and knew the principals of the company very well, going back to the 1950's. When not in college, I was working for my dad as a maintenence mechanic/machinist and actually worked on those presses, so I had somewhat of a connection with them.

Sad to say, both those places are long gone. I believe the old GM property is now waterfront condos.

 

[pieterb]

Hello,

I work in different powerplants in Belgium (everything but nuclear) and we have some big turbines, pumps, fans and motors. We have a 13.000 Cu V12 gas motor, a turbo gas expander running at 15000RPM. All great machines to work on. I have visited some big and very interesting machining shops to do the machining on our big parts. But 2 years ago a visited a Dutch shop that makes extremly high precision parts (mostly high precision bearings) on lathes. The lathes are placed in a air conditioned room, you can only enter the room with max 4 people at the same time to avoid thermal shocks. the lathe are running 24/7,365 days a year (even without parts in the lathe) to keep them at exactly the same temperature all the time. the parts that they are turning are sub micron precise and now the nice part of the story: they put a pre turned, hardened part on magnetic face plate of the lathe. the machine aligns the part, turns the part to size. they take the part out of the machine, measure the complete part and oops: one corner is 0,0001mm (0,00254inch) out of tolerance. They just put the part back in the machine, the machine centers the part again and takes of the 0,0001mm...........................

And in school we learned: put a bar in the lathe, finish the complete part and part it of. NEVER EVER TAKE THE PART OUT OF THE LATHE BEFORE IT IS COMPLETLY FINISHED................

 

[Dr. Hillbilly]

Not a manufacturing plant, but I particularly enjoyed my last visit to NASA Marshal. We were hot-testing a component my staff had built for one of their engines in one of the oldest of their test stands. They were also cleaning up while I was there, and discovered a bunch of old drawings behind a book case. They were for the Apollo program's F1 engine, and had been lost there since the 60's. It was fun to review drawings from such a magnificent effort, that had not been seen for so many decades!
For those of you who do not know the F1, it will probably be the most powerful rocket engine ever made by man. All of the rocket designers now agree that it is easier to use a larger number of smaller motors to achieve the thrust required. The very large motors have some unique stability issues and many of the F1's exploded on the test stand. The engineers ultimately stabilized the engine, but did not know exactly how they did so. But being pragmatic engineers, it was no longer exploding, so they used it!