It’s Been A While Since I Worked Something “Between Centers”.

[jackieschmidt]

He may not want alot of their proprietary tooling and setups out there for copy. When i worked for GE i had a mechanic get fired for posting a shaft alignment video comparing dial indicators and lasers on a turbine inside a cruise ship. The cruise company told ge they couldnt post videos of their equipment and he was not welcome on their property anymore

The only proprietary item we have, or at least guard, is our shaft straightening equipment, which we designed and built.
We have four “rigs” that go from 150 tons to 750 tons. They are very efficient and really do give us a heads up on other shops.

 

[hdskip]

Jackie working with big stuff always amazes me. My whole career was at the opposite end of the spectrum. Small and smaller but high precision. Most of what I worked on you could 10-12 in the palm of your hand easily. The set ups you have to come up with whether small or large is the challenge isn't it. Thanks for sharing. It is always a pleasure to see how others do it.

 

[tobnpr]

“Heat it and beat it, it will give up sooner or later”.

Yep. My most used sentence on jobsites..."You need a bigger hammer"...

For anyone that cares, Keith Fenner has some good videos on shafting- including straightening with heat, interesting stuff. Nothing as big as this, though.

 

[Trophied]

Watched my dad straighten a camper trailer he built one time with heat. Got the spindles dead on. He really knew what he was doing with all metals. That was not even remotely related to this work, although he did work in a shipyard during WWII as a leadman.

 

[Roeder]

We are currently involved in a refit of an old 3000 HP Harbor Tug that is going to be sent to Trinidad after the rebuild.

We are rebuilding the Prop Shafts, (9 inch, 30 feet long), and the steering, The Reduction Gear people are rebuilding the gears. When the Shipyard removed the intermediate “spool shafts” from the gear output flange, sombody got carried away with a sledge hammer.

The Gear people sent them over to us to see if we could make sure the flanges were still true with each other.

This is not as easy as it would appear. I figured the best way would be do them “between Centers”. Only there were no canters in either end.

So, I chucked each one up, trued the flanges OD, and established a true center in each end. I then checked up a slug and cut a 60 degree center. This allowed me to place one end on that center and use a live center in the other while driving it off the chuck with a dog.

It worked great.

Amazingly, none of the young men in my shop had ever seen this set-up. They learned something.

Anyway, View attachment 1408979I like fixing damaged parts. her are some pictures.

View attachment 1408980View attachment 1408981View attachment 1408983

That takes me back to my first machinist job. I worked in a shop that made Hydraulic cylinders. It was a great experience for me.

 

[jdh47]

I don't think Jackie would have the time to do YouTube. It's really interesting seeing the setups.