Have you ever seen a documentary where they show you
through a factory that has amazingly huge machines? We all
have seen those. Have you ever wondered, "What - is
there a store that sells those things? Where do they make
them? And how?" Well, you won't find them in your
average shopping mall, but of course, there has to be a
place where they make and sell them. This week's Target
of the Week is one of those places.
This is a factory in Novosibirsk, Russia that makes the
huge generators that are used in the power stations at
dams or major electric plants around the world. In
fact, the sign being hung by the man in the picture above
says, "Our machines are used in 45 countries of the
world."
If you were going to build your own car, you would first of
all need a garage to work in. The people who build these
huge machines must first build a workspace - sometimes a
single building that covers the space of 6-8 normal city
blocks. The local realtor won't have any of those to sell,
so they have to be specially designed and built for the company.
The building is huge.
One end of the parts storage room
Then, you would need to order and store the parts. Where
do you order a 20-foot long, 2-ton stainless steel rotor?
(like the one in the background, above. If a man were
standing in one of the end cap rings shown in the
foreground, his shoulders would be level to the top of
the cap.) Well, believe it or not, there are other
factories like this one all around the world where you
can buy things like that. Of course, buying a 2 or 3 ton piece
of stainless steel that has been made into a precision
generator rotor can be expensive. And the factory you buy
it from may be half way around the world, so just the
transportation and delivery cost can be more expensive
than buying a new home.
Everything has to be kept somewhere
Neatly, so they can be found when needed
OK, Just lay them on the floor. That's a good place...
And sometimes, it's hard to find room for them.
Sometimes, very hard.
Uh - where should we put this thing?
Then, there's the problem of getting these things from the
parts room to the work area. High above the entire area
there is a man (at this factory, a woman) sitting in a booth,
who rides back and forth all day long, using a large hook
to pick the pieces up and carry them where they need to be.
(The traveling booth and the hook below it are shown in the
background of the picture above.)
The only person in the place who can lift one of these things.
A hydroelectric generator works when flowing water turns
a paddle wheel that is connected to a ring of magnets. The
magnets spin inside a coil of copper wire, generating
electricity in the coil (left diagram). In a hydroelectric
dam, the water held behind the dam is allowed to flow down
a shaft to the paddles (right diagram).
How it works
Naturally, every customer who wants to buy one of these
huge generators has a special design in mind, so when the
parts get to the work area, they must first be customized
to each customer's needs before they can be assembled. This
plant has 1700 employees working in three shifts, so the
plant is in operation 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
The generator is built in several parts, but they are put
assembled from the outside in.
It begins with customizing the shell.
The magnets are bonded to the shafts that will rotate inside
the machine.
The copper coils are wrapped as protection against the elements
and then wound by hand inside the outside case...
...inspected for precision placement...
...and secured to the case.
The huge center rotor is then VERY CAREFULLY threaded
through the hole in the middle of the coil. When finished,
it will be held in place by the end caps.
The center magnetic shaft must be so perfectly balanced that
there cannot be as much as 1/1000th of an inch of wobble in it
when it is spinning at full speed. If the shaft develops a
wobble, it can tear into the coil and the entire generator
will have to be scrapped and a new one built.
The generator is then shipped out to the customer, where it
will be put into an even larger framework to hold it firmly
on the dam's generator room floor.
And it is ready to be used.
During the plant's history, it has delivered turbo- and
hydrogenerators to more than 700 power plants worldwide.
Currently, more than 60,000 large electric machines
produced by the company are being operated in 52
countries of the world. About 30% of power plants in Russia
use generators produced in this plant. The company's stock is
listed as NPO ELSIB on international stock exchanges.
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