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While I was a teacher and school administrator for most of my professional life, I left teaching to work for the Ingersoll Rand Company for about 12 years mid career as a technical trainer. At that time, IR made very large natural gas internal combustion engines with 16 pistons each the size of a 55 gallon drum. The crankshafts were enormous and over 60 feet long with 18" bearing journals. There could only be about .003" inch of what is called web deflection in each crankweb or the bearing would wear, heat up and quickly damage or destroy a $250,000 crank shaft. When a crank web was out of tolerance, an old guy with an equally old canvas bag containing very old hammers and hand made punches would look at the drawings, then the amount of web deflection and a few other measurements, and then select a hammer, punch and the right place to tap. He would give the punch a few taps and the problem was fixed. He didn’t have a college degree and may not even have graduated from high school. For all I knew, he couldn’t read, but he could sure read a crankshaft…Rob
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I find that very interesting and thank you for sharing.
A long time ago engines fascinated me for many reasons. Primarily because in order to have a Cool car (1950-1960) I had to work on them myself. Economics and desire to understand mechanical issues related to a Cool Car.
I was fortunate to have an "“Old Timer” helping me! My mentor had been an aircraft mechanic during WWII, He was a Marine. I owned a Triumph TR3 at th tme. I cleaned the shop, bathrooms too, ran for parts, errands etc. Part of apprenticeship. My first engine build I was pulling the Crankshaft out of the Block and a bunch of Thrust Washers fell out and I had no idea where they came from, Panic set in when my mentor said he didn’t know either because he didn’t take it apart. This is where i begin to learn about deflection of the Crankshaft.
For approximately 4 years I worked assembling engines for a living. There were times when an engine required “Line Boring” the engine block and the journals for the Camshaft inspected and install Cambearings with special tool.
Those Thrust Washers I spoke of are now part of the Main Bearings. Harmonic Balancer on the end of the Crankshaft (Vibration Damper) is a big part of controlling Torsional Vibrations.
I used a small Ingersoll Rand air gun (mac tools) in my assembly work. I Never had to rebuild it, VERY DEPENDABLE. Other Wrenches had to rebuild their Blue Point (Snap-On), guns.
Old Hands are these days Overlooked Resource. Thanks again for sharing and bringing back Many Fond Memories…~~~*BB
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Lots of fun…Rob
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I used to work in a machine shop that built hydroelectric turbines; big stuff. Founded in 1906. In the last few years before I left I watched about 1000 years of experience retire. It disturbed me that no one bothered to do exit interviews and pick their brains. Not CNC: not valuable.
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The same happened here in our country.
But as they retired, the Chinese picked them up and they went to China developing new and I expect more modern turbines there.
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Before I left Ingersoll-Rand, I was an ISO9000 trainer. As we got into face to face meetings with the union people who actually made the things that the engineering department sent them drawings to make them from, we discovered that, in some cases, the union machinists did not follow the drawings. This was because the desired item could not be manufactured from the drawings as presented. We found that, over the years, the machinist would mark up their own copy of the drawing and manufacture the item from these marked up drawings. They would then store that drawing in some squirrel hole ready for the next time. This discovery, while common knowledge, did lead to more of a two way conversation between the engineering department and the manufacturing people. Had this not happened, we would have lost all of this unofficial institutional knowledge as soon as the machinists left, retired died or lost their drawings…Rob
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