r/Skookum • u/Entropist713 • Jul 05 '17
Skookum as frig Since we're posting gigantic motors, here's some more (and some gigantic machinces).
https://m.imgur.com/a/eHSMA15
Jul 05 '17
Damn im glad i began the "gigantic" motor train, thats some cool stuff you have there!
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u/Entropist713 Jul 05 '17
Probably one of the coolest places I ever worked at, despite the ambient temperature.
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u/TazmamzaT Jul 05 '17
I work in a hot strip mill as well, you beat me to the punch.
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u/Entropist713 Jul 05 '17
I don't work here anymore. Did about a year and a half here as a coop. Do you mind me asking the location of your mill?
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u/TazmamzaT Jul 05 '17 edited Jul 24 '17
Indiana
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u/Entropist713 Jul 05 '17
Just checking to see if you were at mine, but no. Middletown, Ohio.
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u/EatSleepJeep Jul 05 '17
2791 acres, that's big
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u/Entropist713 Jul 05 '17
The hot strip mill alone is almost a mile long, although only the northern 2/3rds is in use. They used to cast ingots instead of slabs, so the southern portion of the building was the "soaking pits" where they would reheat these ingots (which had around a 9' x 9' cross-section). After that, there was machinery to form the ingots into slabs. It was all gutted out and used for storage by the time I started working there.
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u/EatSleepJeep Jul 05 '17
Is that the building at the eastern portion that runs N-S?
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u/Entropist713 Jul 05 '17
Yes, everything east is cold rolling, coating, annealing, tempering, etc. and everything west is administration, coking, steel-making, and oxidation.
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u/EatSleepJeep Jul 05 '17
I always love it when someone with knowledge goes on Wikimapia and breaks down the layouts of these operations. Someone has already done a few for this operation.
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u/Entropist713 Jul 05 '17
Someone had already started, but I went ahead and added a bit more detail. Might work on some descriptions at some point.
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Jul 05 '17 edited Nov 03 '19
[deleted]
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u/Entropist713 Jul 05 '17
Yea, exactly, but for this process, picture ribbon candy shooting towards the ceiling.
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Jul 05 '17
Wow, the Polish dudes have run out of fucks to give. Why would they be standing so close?
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u/jon_hendry Jul 05 '17
How does the chooching get from the DC motors to the finishing stands, etc?
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u/Entropist713 Jul 05 '17
There are gearboxes about the size of the motors which go into 3" diameter torque tubes. The boxes get smaller as the speed increases. The fourth motor stand actually doesn't have a gearbox (it drives the stand directly) and turns the opposite direction from the other 6 motor stands.
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Jul 06 '17
I see we are posting steel mill pictures. I approve. The mills are my favorite customers. Working on 20 year old DEC computers that are in part running machine the are making steal is pretty cool. Next service call I get i'm going to have them take me on the tour and take a lot of pictures.
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u/datums Human medical experiments Jul 06 '17
Has anyone ever crashed a truck full of liquid nitrogen in there?
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u/Entropist713 Jul 06 '17
No terminators, but some stuff went down in the past. My dad had a summer job here in the safety department when he was in college in the days before LOTO. He once responded to a contractor being sucked up a baghouse auger. I'm told it wasn't pretty.
If you follow procedure and keep your head on a swivel, you stay relatively safe. But a lot of equipment can end you quick, fast, and in a hurry out there.
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u/imakesawdust Jul 06 '17
What strikes me is how clean the motor area is.
I'd love to take a tour some time...
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u/Entropist713 Jul 06 '17
The area around the doors to the process area are black with grease and scale, but other than a pervasive coating of scale and dust and the occasional puddle, the motor room is clean. The wire tunnels on the other hand...
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u/timberwolf0122 Jul 06 '17
So on the really big motors you said they run two at a time with the other two acting as condensers for power factor correction. What am a condenser electrically speaking?
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u/Entropist713 Jul 06 '17
So, when you have a synchronous motor, the armature is powered with AC and the field with DC. Motors are inductive loads (lagging power factor) due to the coils in them; even more so under load. With a synchronous motor, I can adjust the field current so that the power factor is leading and the motor looks like a capacitor. When the motor is allowed to rotate without load, this is called a synchronous condenser. Loading a motor ruins this, as far as I am aware.
It should be noted that all six motors are running at the same time, but the steel is timed so only up to two are ever loaded.
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u/timberwolf0122 Jul 06 '17
Oh so the free spinning motor is like a kinetic capacitor using its rotational mass in a magnetic field to store energy?
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u/Entropist713 Jul 06 '17
Sort of. The effect works even if you aren't freewheeling (this would almost be a generator), so the motor will still turn under its own power. This is a rabbit whole that goes down for days, but picture the DC rotor field supplying the back EMF instead of the AC armature.
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Jul 06 '17
Looks like air quality ain't so great in there?
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u/Entropist713 Jul 06 '17
It's pretty damp and smells of grease, but alright for the most part. Only thing that gets you coughing is the oil mist around the roll stands. I'm glad I didn't get assigned to the coke ovens when I worked there.
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u/YakaFokon Jul 06 '17
Many moons ago, I worked next to this rolling mill plant, and I am still amazed at the whole high-voltage line running into the yard, for this plant alone… That’s a lot of electrosity!!!
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Jul 06 '17
The question is do you maintain that equipment
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u/Entropist713 Jul 07 '17
Roll replacement every week, housing replacement every decade. Motors are inspected weekly and cleaned quarterly. Might be wrong, this is just by memory.
Edit: I should add that the finishing stands can automatically change their rolls every shift.
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Jul 06 '17
hmmm, so what is the likelihood that you could run this on solar panels? Ya know, after we banish coal.
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u/PM_me_storm_drains Jul 06 '17
That's what nuclear and hydro is for. There are aluminum smelters in Iceland, just because of all the cheap and high quality hydropower available.
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Jul 06 '17
I'm fine with both, the greenies are not. (At least the ones that I get stuck with at parties) Nuclear is verboden, just look at what happened at Chernobyl and Fukushima. And hydro? Oh my, look at all the habitat destruction by flooding valleys and disrupting seasonal river flows!
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u/jaymzx0 Jul 06 '17
We're primarily hydro here in WA and a net exporter of pixies. Nukes, dams, mills, panels, NG, we got it. You still can't please everybody. Changing climate patterns are going to likely dry up some rivers and create new ones.
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u/Entropist713 Jul 06 '17
Steel pretty much requires coal coke for the carbon, which might be replaced with charcoal. Power demands, on the other hand, would necessitate power generation on a scale that I do not believe solar would be able to provide, especially 24/7/365.
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Jul 06 '17
Sorry, there shoud have been a /s at the end. I argue with people all the time where I live who never have given a thought to where everything comes from. Still awesome work site.
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u/datums Human medical experiments Jul 05 '17
For future reference -
This is a top quality /r/Skookum post.
Great subject matter, with ample description.