Are there any metallurgical engineers directly associated with Electric Power Generation that would be willing to start a separate forum dealing with specific material issues related to boilers, turbines and BOP equipment?
When I read the subject line of this post, I assumed that a "head" was some metal component in a power plant as in a header. That is until I saw the post from who else but andyenergy. Come on Andy are you real or what? Sorry to be so slow but that simply made my day especially with your terse reply.
recently I had the pleasure of touring the bowels of the Cabinet Gorge Dam in Idaho near the Montana border where they are upgrading from 50 to 75 MW turbines. We got to see parts and pieces in various stages of rebuild such as the S.S. Turbine being welded and the 300 ton rotor, studs for connecting shafts that are threaded for eye bolts to be lifted by crane, etc. Wow, neat stuff!
Sorry? Didn't quite get what you meant there Metman - I wasn't aware that I was so notorious (whaddya mean who else but anyenergy??!). I can assure you that I am very real indeed but also very short of time at the point of posting.
Perhaps I should have been a bit more formal...
I would be extremely grateful to have the opportunity to take advantage of and contrubute to a forum on power plant materials.
I have been called block headed, hard headed, but never metal headed. Many power plant metallurgies would be considered to be much softer than my head. They make me wear hard hats to protect the equipment.
Notwithstanding all that, I would be interesting in participating in just such a fourm.
Sorry, no offense intended. I was in a light headed mood but probably just being thickheaded and certainly too denseheaded on the subject to participate but am interested to see what develops and likely learn something.
Hey, Metman, sometimes a little levity is good for us old stuffy engineers. After all train driving gets sort of boring after a while. I, too, hope my remarks were taken in that vein. They were intended as such.
I iterate again, back to the subject of the thread, that I would be interested in such a forum that addresses intrests that I have.
And, if you are ever in the Las Vegas area, do the Hoover Dam tour. To bad security considerations no longer permit the "hard hat" tour that took interested parties much deeper into the belly of the beast, (for an additional fee, of course). Very interesting for an old boiler guy more oriented to thinking in terms like supercritical, deep vacuum, etc.
who you calling old? No offence taken by anyones comments. I was a bit surprised that's all - as though somehow you knew me which couldn't be possible.
Even though I'm in the UK, I got married in Vegas (Little White Chapel) and have done the Hoover bowels tour. V interesting indeed.