I’m not a Millwright by any stretch of the imagination but sometimes I do that kind of work.
I have changed out 300 HP electric motors that run on 480 volts and weighed over 1600 pounds. The best part is that they were inside of a 3 foot across pipe 4 foot off the ground.
I couldn’t find an exact match but this is close enough. It’s inside that bell in the front there.
Loads of fun, trust me.
Of course I’ve swapped big electric motors on pumps and other things too.
Things like this,
The thing is, the alignment of the pump and motor shafts is a critical thing.
If they are not close to perfect, it will vibrate and very quickly eat up the coupler or bearings on the shafts.
I’m talking thousands of an inch .
They have a laser alignment tool where I work but I have had to do it the hard way too.
That’s why this little skit of Millwright Humor hits for me.
wut in tarnshun is that big blue thing in the first picture? Second picture is a nice clean pump room. Not at all like the dark, very noisy, hot & humid basement under the paper machines with grey water from overflowing spill boxes making the floor super slippery where you had to be careful not to lose your balance and fall into one of the ancient 4′ diameter pulleys connected to the circa 1910 pumps that would surely take an arm off at the mill in the middle-of-nowhere, Maine just south of Katahdin when a certain engineer was working a summer job.
Laser alignment tools were just coming into use at the Naval Shipyard when it closed in 1995.
I aligned a large amount of couplings with a dial indicator and got very good at it.
And as is always the case, if you are good at something, you do it more, and you get even better.
After the ‘yard closed, I worked for six months as a millwright at a steel plate rolling mill, and they never actually fixed anything there.
Every breakage was “fixed” by burning the bolts off with a smoke wrench, and putting a replacement in that had been overhauled by an outside firm.
They didn’t even pretend to align the machinery.
I wasn’t a good fit there, and bailed after six months.
If someone finds out you’re good at something you usually end up doing all the shit work because you have proven to be competent, unlike 80% of co-workers and management.
Amen
I always asked for the ‘shit jobs’ because management would leave you alone since they were desperate for someone to do them.
That’s genius Judy.
Not quite the same thing but in the ball park. I did a lot of work for a seed corn operator and he wanted to drive two centrifugal dryer fans with one diesel motor. The one was simple as it was driven off of the clutch assembly in the rear of the motor while the other had to have a bracket made to fit the harmonic balancer at the front. I was told that the bracket that the local drunk [formerly a competent welder but not a machinist] would be adequate. When I protested that it was so far off that it would wreck the driveshaft and I refused to hook it up the local drunk hooked it up. I got a desperate call at 6:30 the next morning when the drive shaft flew off and landed about 80 feet away. Fortunately at that hour no one was around to get hit. I had a local machinist make a an attachment plate, replace the ruined balancer, replaced the wrecked driveshaft, and had it back and running by noon. After that if I balked at some money or time saving idea he had he more often than not went along with my suggestions.
Had two huge bearings in our drive system at last employer. Back in that day they cost about 2 grand each. Pretty sure a sledge hammer was used during replacement periods.
Just wait until you get to the 4160 volt motors that have cold alignment, hot alignment, and running alignment. And you use 480 volt hydraulic power units with special presses to move the motherfucker 1/8 inch – oops, too fucking far, break down and switch to the other side, shit, too far again, break down and move over to the original side, almost there, fuck – all at double over-time around 1 am in the morning and me as the fucking engineer that has to sit there and sign off when they’re done. Incidentally, I’ve seen a 480 volt motor throw a 40 pound coupling unit over 200 ft when it decided to shit the bed. One piece of it sheered clean thru a 2 inch carbon steel pipe. Fun times with big machinery.
That dude would have been king of the hill at the poultry processing plant I ‘retired’ from. That sounds like the method they used for every motor replacement. I used to close the parts house and go watch just to see if I could learn some new curse words.
What is with the gold neck chains?? Those suckers will cut your head off when caught in the chiinery and burn the cutest scar when you drag it across the exposed hot side. Duh.
Linked
Sounds like my whole life! Kek!
Was industrial electrician, worked 45 years. Best of those years were working
with mechanic, hydraulic, repairman, company’s title.. Bosses had no idea most of the time what we were doing, built projects using what we found in our large spares warehouse. Like old time hardware store, ya walked the isles and opened drawers finding stuff that would work. We even wore out a mechanical engineer. My standard saying. “they provide bosses and engineers for our entertainment”
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My mechanic buddy’s favorite saying was “we been doinin’ it this way for 44 years” Do miss that large maintenance shop and my own shop for projects.
One of our Two most favorite tasks was changing out a Motor-Generator set in the Launch Tube.
14 feet long, a DC motor/AC motor/AC generator (400 HZ) for the launcher, it was an absolute nightmare physically wrestling it to the Personnel Access Tube, lifting it out and putting it on a flatbed. Now, simply reverse the process to install the new one.
The only other one was changing the sump pump at the bottom of the launch tube, 95 feet down. In wet, muddy, chemical-laden water that was rank and greasy and even *smelled* toxic. Boy, do I have stories about THAT crap!!
Spent my (thankfully brief) time in Hell. I hear ya!
P.S. – the MG set was only 2-1/2 tons, thank goodness.