Day 15... Sunday to Relax

The turbine upper half casing is complete...all of the shrouds and nozzles were installed and ready for reassembly. The RO blades were delivered early morning and the bucket techs completed installing shortly after lunch. Lets keep out fingers cross that this replacement set purchased is not a lemon!

PowerPlantForum LOGO....this is it!

PowerPlantForum.com is the side project I've been working on with my college buddy... We had a slow start the past year but hopefully within the next few months, we'll go live with the web site. I truly believe in the website and is much needed for the industry. I don't think it will pay the bills but at least offer a means for everyone in the power industry to network and discuss about issues and best practices.

Day 14....Tip grinding and Shell installation

Its a saturday... Overtime pay day today! Its ironic that no one wants to work! We only had a crew of 8 ppls from 7am to 3pm... and from 3-7pm it was just the vendors and myself! The vendors set up their compressor tip grinding machine which is like a belt sander to shave a few mills off the tips of R13-R15 blades. This will allow thermal expansion and avoid rubbing the casing. We started putting shrouds and nozzles on the upper half turbine casing.. still needs to complete the installation of the 2nd stage nozzles. Guess they left some items for the night shift to complete!
We'll see how many ppls show for tomorrow!

Day 13 Things are starting to take shape

The turbine shell came back from the OEM today. The weld repair looks decent.. I hope that it will bolt right up. We removed the R0 blades today and inspected all for cracks. Two blades had cracks and another 6-7 showed signs of pitting and fretting wear. New replacements are on their way and should be ready for installation on Sunday morning. The third stage nozzles are installed and the guys are working on installing the second stages. We began mounting shourds to the turbine shell also. things are starting to come together.... hopefully we'll be able to gather all of the hardware removed for a smooth reassembly! Stay tuned!

Day 12.... Jacking the mouth!

We spent the better portion of the day jacking up the bell mouth 18inches inorder to remove the R0 blade of suspect. The #11 blade will need to be rotated to the horizontal joint in order to be extracted. Once removed, we will perform additional tests to determine the true condition of the R0 blade. Testing includes, ECI, Zyglo PT, UT, and possibly taking dental molds of the dovetails. Cross your fingers!

All three stages of buckets were installed last night in addition to the lower half shroud blocks.
Lower half inner barrel was installed.. and as you can see in the photos a shiny new groove was cut in the aft region for the shrouded S17 and EGV's!
The turbine shell should be on its way back from the GE repair shop tomorrow... but when?

Day 11. Reassembly...halfway there.

Chaos Chaos=CASH!!
We discovered fretting wear on one of the rotating blades which will need to be replaced. We are moving feverishly to source replacements!
We started installing the rotating buckets today and will wrap up this evening.
The mechanics will start installing shrouds and 1st nozzle and try to get the inner barrel back on the shaft. The stator vanes on the upper half were reinstalled yesterday along with shrouded S17 and EGv's! check out the cool modification!

Day 9... Schedule slipping. ouch!

Day 9...we'll we were short handed today due to the Holidays. The rotating buckets are being removed starting with the first stage. We performed Co2 cleaning on the upper half casings. Although it removed the oil deposits, the blades are not as shiny as a good old fashion spit shine.