Whats This Gadget

Keep in mind there is 13000 hp going through this particular cotton reel.
The shaft picture :The cotton reel is to the left of the picture.
The black part is 5mm thick carbon fibre. One nick in this and it will fly to bits. Black bit around $240,000 worth

Basil

Here is some more gadgets for you to think about

Basil

Iz th@ pic of the doingz right side up

Nuther/other pic a rotisseriey

Submerged ark,s and FB english wheel,

I've seen ya testing those ferries off Cottesloe/Swanbourne, when I've been reclining on the waters edge and soaking up some rays. Those big muthas sit up and boogie, don't they??
The water displacement behind the jets is staggering, when they give those big donks full throttle.
You can see the water piling up about a metre or more high behind the stern. Their speed is something impressive, too.

I recall having a tour of one the first big ferries about 15 yrs ago .. about a 100M job, I seem to recall .. that had Cat 3618's powering it.
Apparently, those 3618's were a complete dog, and a total embarrassment to Cat, though. I notice they no longer build them.

#1 is for making all welds at a safe working level and the same way (vert up or horizontal or something)
#2 as adam siad FB english wheel
#3 auto mig/tig for joining lots of strips
#4 unknown to me maybe fitting a very very FB bearing

thats what i think i saw

First pic is a big lifty up turny over doover. We build modules on it and as learner said it makes the welding mostly down hand and mostly done standing at floor level. Has saved alot of accidents. This was Mk 1. 2 and 3 have 20 meter decks and chainblocks are all electric and synchronised. Pretty impressive seeing a 15 ton module on these.
Chocs got the second one. Its a big powered english wheel.
We roll up to 20 mm plate in this. 8m x 2.4m sheets.
Computer program works out roll line pattern and crush on rollers then operators feed it back and fowards to roll hull plates. They do compound curves on these machines. I built this one 15 years ago and its still going. We have four more now.
Third machine we built in house for auto welding extruded planking sections together. This was done before on yer knees with a buggo. Buggo is a mig hand piece on wheels you push along buy hand. Save a thousand man hours on a big boat with this machine.
Last gadget works good. A laser is used to find shaft center in the big ali cone welded into the back of the boat.
Cone is 150mm thick. Once center is found all the way to the engine beds 30 meters ahead a dummy shaft is set of plummer bearings. The disc turns true to shaft. On the left hand side behind the dude a big makita router mounts and is adjusted in / out with the T handle you can see. Stack of flanges on other side is to counterweight router. Its use is to machine jet cone flat at a true 90

Wow 'GM diesel' please say more (or do it offlist to rodsmith @ werple.net.au). Does the motor lose efficiency because torque out is not the same as torque in: some of the force goes into bending the shaft? Surely that would end when the shaft is at maximum bend?
Or, is the strain gauge simply a calibration: once you know bend per force, you can then measure force from bend.
I have a heap of material somewhere on a 1930s mechanical integrator, as used for railway performance measurement. One integrates force with distance; the other integrates with velocity.

Modern weighbridges are dynamic, and rely on calibrated deflections in a section of rail being passed by a moving train. They will work at either line speed, or no worse than half line speed.

Are those boats Austal, or something smaller?

Roderick B Smith
Rail News Victoria Editor

Hi Roderick,

The process on the floor is simply to calibrate strain gauges. They then stay on the bobbin without being bumped.
They are wireless so they wizz around with bobbin.
With the big engines you might be cranking full revs say 1100rpm +/- 3 rpm with a governor setting of 100% MCR
MCR is maximum continuous rating. So you have two planets lined up but the third is unknown, torque. This strain gauging is used to work this out. As I said it get quiet involved to calculate because of friction through gearbox, oil temp and viscosity etc but we can get to 1% accuracy with this method. If we have a speed penalty on a boat of $250,000 per every 0.1 of a knot you can see why we do it. Sure we could in some case get another 10 rpm out of the engine which theoretically would fix problem but power curve has started to drop past 1100 so you dont have the power to do the work. You can in some cases actually slow down.
If strain gauge says we are at full rated power and boat weight is correct but down on speed then its a pitch problem. If engine spins to full rpm and torque is low your under pitched. If you have full torque but can only achieve 1095rpm then your over pitched.
Pitching a propeller or water jet to land bang on the engine power curve is an art.

Sorry for boring stuff :-[

Basil