Outage addendum

 "We are so busy doing the urgent that we don't have time to do the important." - Confucius

 A month in and a month to go.  Probably one of the longest outages that I've ever suffered through.  The shift guys I've put back on shift, so they get their scheduled days off.  I'm still putting in pretty long weeks though - like six 9.5 hour days = 57 hour work weeks.  At least it pays well.

More photos with captions:

Below:  The old steam turbine thrust bearings. These things *always* look thrashed.  Every time.

Below: The generator non-driven end following rewind.  The end turns and phase connections have not yet been made, but the stator bars are in place.

Below:  The end turn windings are being temporarily held in place with vise grips prior to brazing.

Below: Brazing the end turn windings.

Below: End turn windings and larger phase windings brazed in place.

Below:  How it looks prior to insulation.

Below:  After insulating, the end turn windings must be baked at 200 degrees C for 24 hours.  The oven that blows the hot air in is the gray box to the right. 

Once the insulation on the end turns (white slots) has been baked, it has to be cooled down before work can resume.  Thus all the fans.

Meanwhile the turbine has been undergoing work and repair.

If you have sharp enough eyes, you might see the nature of the repair :)

And there's always the fun operations stuff:  Closing up all of the steam drum access doors.  One of the benefits of my recent promotion is that I'm now taking pictures of the guy doing the work instead of being the guy doing that work!