Here are 4 hydraulic torque wrenches being used at once to evenly torque a flange.

medium pressure based on the thickness and studs.

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^^^^ Impressive!!

I used to work on Geho Pumps. Small in comparison, but they were amazing quality.

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Gotta love a bald kitty!

That's some really cool stuff you get to work on. Who makes that stuff? Are they one-offs? what if something goes south, what do you guys do about back up?

Torquing can be done by other methods besides using wrenches and multipliers. When I was in the Navy, I was involved with 5 reactor refueling operations with the older and smaller GE and Westinghouse 150MW reactors. In those cases the fuel is put in while the reactor cover is off and once all the fuel modules are in place the "lid" goes on. It has an omega seal welded around the circumference to prevent leaks and then the nuts are tightened on the studs. This was done by lubricating the nuts and studs threads with a graphite/alcohol solution, tightening the nut hand tight to a line on the vessel head. Finally a hydraulic stretcher was put over the studs (two 180 degrees apart) and the stud was stretched. If I remember correctly we used a stretch equal to 1,250,000 ft lbs of torque and I was always worried the whole machine would explode as we were on top of the lid watching the hydraulic pressure gauges and those studs would make all sorts of noises!

Random:http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1447769094.jpg

BTDT.

when I worked on nuke generating plant turbines we used hydraulic stud stretchers, but we measured the stretch using ultrasound equipment that was accurate to about a thousandth.
Best part of that was that it took the coefficient of friction out of the equation. No more having to worry about the spot face or washer or thread lubricant etc.
Very accurate plus it would tell you if a crack was developing in the stud.

Bad part was, you had to remove the stud (up to 6 feet long) and machine both ends perfectly flat and parallel in order to get an accurate ultrasound reading.



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Lots of manufacturers, all the big stuff is engineered to application specific designs (custom).

Big names in API pumps are Flowserve, Sulzer, Clyde union, etc.
Flowserve bought up almost all the competition.
The big names for compressors are Elliott, Dresser, AC, IR, Cooper Bessemer.
Everything is spared except the really expensive stuff (over $10 mil).

I'm going to an API dinner meeting tonight at the queen mary, gonna rub elbows the with the guys who write the engineering standards. Smart cookies.

Look closely in the upper left corner....
This is the original mask for the 1982 Berkeley Reduced Instruction Set Computer II (RISC II) chip. They used the philosophy of the 911: lightweight, fast, small, optimize what you need and don't add anything extra. This design evolved into the SUN SPARC CPU and was later recognized as one of the most important computer designs by the IEEE Computer Architecture SIG because of its influence on every CPU designed afterwards.

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