Let's put a spin on things

Now that the generator assembly is all put together and working nicely as far as we can tell, lets assemble a turbine. As you can see the generator spins really nicely and by hand no less.

It was a beautiful fall day, we fired up the 3000# Toyota forklift and began to ponder how are we going to insert the generator assembly into the taper, and then "lightly" press the propellor onto the shaft. Mentioning the capacity of the forklift is a foreshadow of things to come.

I saw the opportunity to take a redneck fish picture while the generator was hanging there. I think I got a good catch, wouldnt you say?Things were getting real, it may just be some pieces of steel and bolts, but when large things get put togethere there is some real satisfaction because things happen before your eyes. This generator has been rebuilt many times, had many owners, and now im one of them, and its my responsibilty to do it right, as others have before me.

This blogpost will probably be more pictures than words, as theres just a lot going together but not very much in terms of technical things. I am very greatful that we got by chance a double mast forklift with about 20' of lift. When you have the 6' of chain and the 6' tall generator section and the 6' long taper turns out you need a lot of height. So we got the correct orientation of the generator and lowered it in. When we first picked up the generator it was 180 out so we put a piece of wood down on the ground and then rachet strapped the generator to the dead dump truck in the parking lot and reset the chains.

Now the generator is taper, and I thought it would be slightly tricky to align the studs sticking out of the assembly to go into the taper section, but it just took a little jiggling and prying from the bottom to align the studs and lower it in place. We had blocked the taper up enough that I could fit underneath and put the nuts on to tighten them. The Milwaukee impact made short work and I had plenty of room to work on the ground. You can also see the dumptruck we used to rotate the generator./p>

Now for the slightly sketchy part of pivoting the assembly 90 degrees. For people who havent moved heavy things before, this can be a butt puckering moment. When tipping things over like this, there is a balance point where the weight shifts from one side to the other, and you have to catch it. Usually if you dont have things perfectly secured this can yank on straps and chains in ways that arent intended. You can see the fork C clamps on the ends of the forks to catch the chain from yeeting off when the weight shifts.

If you did't already know how load ratings for forklifts work, let me try to explain. A forklift is its strongest at the root of the forks, in this case the sticker says 5000#. Now like any lever its harder to pickup things with your arms extended than near your chest. This forklift is rated for 3000#, which is the rating at the tips of the forks, because if you rate things differently idiots do idiot things. And I can tell you lifting this was at the weight rating of the machine. Not the power but it was starting to get tippy. So our estimate is about 4000# as it sits in the picture.

Now all we have from the previous blog from French River company, is that the propellor bore and the generator shaft has a slight interference fit. So the plan was to heatup the prop and outside was about 50F or less. We did calculate and measure that a 50 degree delta would work, keyword "would". So I heated up the prop with a little electric space heater from the dump, turned out the space heater had a little tilt switch in it so you dont light carpets on fire. So after taking it apart and cutting the saftey out we were cooking with electricity. Needless to say this did nothing.

The plan was simple, I had taken a bolt that had the very odd m30x.5 thread on it and drilled and tapped a 1/2-13 hole. Loctited a 1/2-13 threaded rod and the idea was to use the threaded rod as a clamp to press the propellor onto the shaft. This was all because in the previous blog they had a hydraulic press setup to do this and we were being cheap. Man let me tell you..... I wish we had a hydraulic setup, because that Mother Fathers Sisters friggin thing didnt want to go on. We assumed a 1/2-13 calmping force would be enough to pull it in and wow oh wow were we just wrong. It was also double tricky because there was a huge key that had to line up. We took an inclinometer and measured the tilt of the keyway in the prop and tried to match it on the shaft. That part actually worked out.

Now we werent messing around, we took two chain hoists 2ton and 3ton and tied them around the propellor, and I reefed on the friggin things till the chains sang, and still nothing. As the shaft moved in there was more surface area and it got harder to pull in. So at this point we have maybe 2-3 ton preload on the prop, and the 1/2-13 rod working for us. This worked to a point. But we never give up we must keep going.

Meet Kyle, I just named Kyle and Kyle doesnt like tuesdays. I'm not sure if it was a tuesday but lets say it was. This is a nice 3'' bronze bar provided by howard to use as a hammer. Using steel or something similar would ding up the prop, and we don't want that. Now the question is how do you use this 60ish pound bar as a hammer?

Now you can see the final setup. We have the chainfalls fully loaded and butt pucker tight, we have the 1/2-13 stud, and now the persuasion named Kyle being man handled by Aaron.

Please click the video for audio. This part was pretty satisfying, with each hit it goes in and it was working really well. We pulled out all the stops we had, and it was just enough to get the job done. And let me tell you, I pray I never have to take that thing off, beacuse I am not sure what I would do.

After a reasonable day. It appears we now have a turbine, is it a good turbine? No... But its ours and so far so good. It was starting to get cold so we wrapped it up and left it for the winter while we worked on other things in the background. Again its really satisfying to take a pile of parts and put everything togther and do the best job you can do and pray that everything is good. We took the winter off from going to the site and working on the turbine, as it was ready to go for spring when the snow melted. We will pickup next installing the turbine in its place up at the dam.