Union Millwrights - Making engineers look good!

[Chubby]

I just spent the last few weeks on a forced outage. When the alignment portion of the job began; turbines, clutches, generator, and pumps, “Mr. Engineer” (The TA) cracks open his “shaving kit” of tools and pulls out a beat-to-shit indicator mounted on a BOLT and clamp. I couldn’t make this up if I wanted to (btw, I was told by “Mr. Engineer” my Starrett tools were a waste of money…lol). Anything and everything I knew and learned regarding proper shaft alignment was thrown right out the window. This “Fireplug” was on a mission.

I swear on my children he used a 1/4” BOLT as a reference for the angular misalignment. He would just slip that shiny piece-o-metal between the faces of the coupling and check to see that they had the same “feel”. Parallel misalignment was achieved by mounting previous mentioned pile-o-crap indicator and just rotating the ONE “easily, turnable” shaft. When the numbers weren’t working in his favor, pencil-whip time! “We’ll just make ‘em work, Son”. “This is a flex coupling, no prob”. “Eliminate soft-foot? Get outta here with that”.

The sad thing is he might get lucky and maybe it will all work out. Maybe. That will just give him a feeling of success. Have you ever heard this one before?...”I’ve done it this way a thousand times and never had a problem”. Yeah, well maybe on one-thousand and one you will have a problem. Maybe this is the machinery that will require ANOTHER forced outage.

Mis-alignment on a generator oil supply pump started this whole outage (a completely destroyed LoveJoy coupling, hubs and all, if you can believe it), who knows, maybe we can do it all over again. It just seems to be a shame when you have no option but to just watch someone fumble-fuck around. Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn every now and then. Oh well, I’m making money.

Shaft misalignment can be traced to almost all industrial pump, motor, coupling, seal, and bearing failures. Period.

It costs a lot more to do something twice rather than to do it right the first time.

[millrat]

The problem with most engineers is that they are educated WAY beyond their intelligence.

[millwrightlong]

I cannot remember how many times i have seen just this sort of thing. Its crazy. While yes it may create more work, how many times have you had a failure from this kind of crap blamed on us. many many

[Chubby]

Kinda reminds me of the old saying, "How can somebody so smart, be so stupid".

[Conrad1]

I had to ask one once after he had tried single handedly to align a gearbox which was put back in place if he actually wanted it done " today" And if we would quit screwing around and let us do what he called us for? He was holding us resposible for warranty anyway.

I guess we have all seen alot of that book smart better than tool smart stuff. Looks good on those guys when it goes bad though and we are still there to make it work.

I must say though that I have worked with some exceptionally smart and creative engineers that for sure were a godsend on the job. Hard Hats off to that bunch!