Onsite machining, or in field machining, is one of the greatest innovations in the last few decades of industrial manufacturing. There are many fixtures and machines across every industry that are either impossible or extremely costly and time-consuming to disassemble and send to a third-party location for repair or augmentation. The ability to have repairs or have the machine’s production supplemented onsite can offer substantial savings in downtime and man-hours.
But these onsite services come with their own set of challenges. Because of their temporary nature, each machine setup needs to be properly aligned, leveled and verified to ensure the highest production quality for the tightest tolerance industries. To machine a 7m diameter turbine wheel casing for EDF, Tacquet Industries in France knew they would need some measurement assistance to ensure the production. They turned to the Globally Local team of Real Metrologists at API Services. Using API’s state-of-the-art Radian Laser Tracker, API Services was able to:
- Complete measurements onsite with Tacquet over the course of two days
- Compensate for “bumps” and “off axes” of the original casing
- Certify the new casing shape to less than .3mm defect
Tacquet Industries, founded in 2004, is a company that specializes in on-site machining and has become a leader in the French market. Tacquest clients have entrusted the company with ‘impossible’ missions that have forged its expertise and enabled the company to meet the most ambitious machining, drilling, turning, and facing challenges for manufacturing in nuclear, chemical, iron, steel, and more.
For a recent project to machine a replacement 7m diameter turbine wheel casing for EDF, Tacquet knew that to compensate for the old casing’s imperfections and manage the large measurement dimensions, they would need some additional measurement expertise. Tacquet selected the Globally Local team of Real Metrologists at API Services for the adjustment of the machine in relation to the rotation axis of the wheel casing. Going onsite with Tacquet, the team used API’s state-of-the-art Radian Pro Laser Tracker to get to work.
The axle of the turbine wheel casing was measured beforehand, with the adjustment made in 1.5 days with Tacquet. For this process, adjustment pins had been provided on the machine. The operation was rather delicate because the old casing was deformed and moreover off-axis; this complicated the machining because it was necessary to compensate for the ‘bumps’ and the ‘off-axis’ dimensions.
On the generated measuring report above, the deviations from the final dimension in terms of the thicknesses had to be taken up before machining could be viewed.
In the second report, you can see that after machining there is a mantle centered at less than 0.15mm in relation to the rotation axis of the turbine with a shape defect of 0.289mm. The diameter of the casing was adjusted in relation to the diameter of the turbine wheel in order to have the clearance requested by the customer.
With more than 200 years combined measurement experience, the expert team of Real Metrologists at API Services was able to mobilize quickly to help Tacquet quickly and accurately gather all of the measurement data they needed to machine the new wheel casing for EDF. The Globally Local team at API Services have application expertise in every industry for Measurement, Alignment, Prototype Inspection, 3D Scanning, Reverse Engineering, Machine Tool Calibration, and more. And they are experts with API’s world-class portable metrology equipment. API’s Radian Laser Trackers are the smallest, lightest, most accurate Laser Trackers in the world.
This content was first posted on the API metrology website