imperial nuts n bolts??
Turbo Mini Forums

well I'm teaching an AMA in Motor Vehicle Maintance and Repair using the City and Guilds frame work :)

So not much has happened to it...


Although today I am teaching Technicians to become Diagnostic Technicians in BMW.



alex

AlexF

sounds as though you have a good job alex?

i started as a lad with the N.C.B many years ago progressed and moved into building CNC spark erosion machines for
Rolls Royce, British aerospace, then into bespoke filling machines

now in the food sector for severall years as top puffler in engineering
at a well known company.

but iam sick off all the shite!
what goes with it alex

you kinda forget a lot of the basics and go into politics of the company

i bet its very rewarding. for you

Edited by BENROSS on 22nd Mar, 2005.

past my city and guilds 1972 1,2,3, light heavy vechicals,

Sorry about the hi jack dave!

Yeah is a good job... today were doing Ohm's Law, Power Law and resistor circuits. It can be made fun honest LOL.

It is nice as theres a real "feel good" factor if you get someone to understanding somthing they initally thought was to hard for them :)

Alex

AlexF

I bugger about with arc furnaces, quite interesting, also very large and noisy. Voltage is not that high (around 600V) but current is around the 330,000A level.........you should see the electric meters whizzing round!!!!!

you dont wan to to get your pinki in there tom!

No definately not!!!!

Power of the thing is quite amazing, when it starts to arc onto cold scrap steel, the arc length can be up to around 1 metre long. The only problem with that is it will tend to arc on its own structure and try to melt itself rather than the scrap that you want it to melt.........

As for the noise that is something else......... they quote that 8 seconds exposure to it on full tilt everyday for a year will make you deaf!! Needless to say safety equipment and protection is the number one priority, comes before production levels.

They melt it down with an arc?

Alex

AlexF

Yeah! 3 bloody great arcs in fact!

Without boring everyone to death, there are two main ways of making steel, either you do it from iron ore, coke and 'virgin' raw materials to make effectively 'brand new' steel, or, as we do where I work, you melt down scrap, refine it by using various methods to remove impurities, and then add small quantities of alloys in order to reach the exact metallurgical composition you require.

The method used depends on what you are aiming for in your end product, the arm of the company I work for make high grade steels mainly for forging, or other high strength applications. We use the arc route, as by carefully selecting what grades of scrap you melt down, you can get closer to the final composition you require utilising the scrap, rather than making plain carbon steel from ore, and then having to add all the alloy you require. Alloys are horrendously expensive, for example we have certain types of Nickel that comes in barrels that are a similar size to a 205L oil barrel, each one of these barrels costs ?4500!!

The scale of it is something that is hard to get a grip of when you haven't seen it, I am forever telling my dad about stuff, but he finds it hard to visualise it as he hasn't seen it. I would love to be able to take him a tour round and show him it all as its really very interesting, but unfortunately company rules do not allow it.

its like arc welding but on a HUGE scale I guess....

Its def a shame they don't do tours I'd love to be "bored to death" and see that!!!

alex

AlexF

Hmm I suppose I am so used to seeing it that the spectacle of it is kind of lost on me now.........

Kind of a bit like arc welding I suppose. Never heard it compared to that though before.

The electrodes are carbon and so strictly non-consumable. But in practise they do suffer from erosion due to the arcing quite badly. They are approximately 2ft diameter by about 20 ft long.
However they can calculate how much erosion occurs and then add that amount of carbon into the steel composition, you always end up adding carbon in the form of coke anyway, so any you gain from an electrode is no big problem.

Again, another one that amazed me to begin with, add lime in the form of stones like you could have on your drive, they melt in the steel to add calcium at certain times.......stones that melt.......mad.....

very intresting tom, any chance you may be able to sneak a few intresting pics?

the furnace is nearly as hot as our lasses mouth!
on full!

ive had a tour round scunny steel works tom. cant remember who with. the rollers were good to watch, goes in one end, comes out a completely different shape at the other!

Not really supposed to take any pictures of the stuff, god knows why as its not exactly cutting edge stuff. But seeing as I am the engineer in charge of the shift I will see what I can do........

Rolling mills are definately good to watch, I can quite happily stand there for ages watching them roll. One place I was att rolled 180mm square billets into 13mm round rod, in an 18-stand continuous process. The 180mm squares were fed in one end fairly slowly, due to size reduction the material would be doing something like 95mph at the other end!

yeah they were ripping through, was cool.

ohms law alex. is it still i over v r memories of an old fart teaching us it 30 years ago my old college folder is still at me mums seen it the other week. tom been in some of those steel plants impresive sights but can but the shiters up you when you here the big bangs

yes it is pete...

alex

AlexF