ECN Electrical Forum
Discussion Forums for Electricians, Inspectors and Related Professionals

Hi guys,

Sorry about the title of the thread but I'm looking for some you guys that work in un-usual areas of our trade and would be looking to submit pictures of some of the weird gear you work on.
This will be put in a thread called Things We Do.
I have recently changed jobs from our local PoCo and are now working for a company inspecting and helping fit controls to Dairy sheds here.
Dairy sheds are a lot more complex than I had imagined, but it makes for great reading though.
Anyone else care to share pics with us folks?.
You are more than welcome to e-mail me pics at my email address in my profile, a good description would be great, as often, what you see here, is 9/10ths of the time what has been sent to us Moderators.
Or you could use the new Upload area provided by Bill and send me a link via PM.
All up, I just want to see what you guys are up to outside of the traditional areas of pipe and wiring, there are some good things going on, lets see them.

I do railway planning work which is quite unusual, but unfortunately I can't give any pictures since all I ever see is plans - I'm the CAD slave of the company. (That's right, they actually call me slave... one of the reasons why I won't get old in that company).

I am actually a security guy with an electrical problem, an addiction if you will, but here are some pics of what I do.

The first is an elevator card access installation, this is where the lockout happens, four cars and 22 floors.



Here is the security console at a private residence in East Hampton, NY



Here is a CCTV rack at the Atlantic City Boardwalk Hall



Here is my volunteer fire department doing a rescue drill at the local quarry, thats me in the middle with the 31 shield





(We really we not all that close to the weather head, and power was LOTO as part of the drill)

Jim

Jim,
This is exactly what I mean!.
I take it you wired all of them controls and relays?.
That is so well set out, I nearly cried, I've become so used to seeing rough, added on to work, (sure the original install might have been good, but when the next guy comes in and cuts all the cable supports, to get his gear in.....), it heartens me to think that there still is good neat work going on out there, hence the thread I hope to start.
All you other fella's reading this, needn't be shy at all.
Our Violations area here has a tonne of bad pics, lets see some of you guys best work, doesn't need to be directly electrical either, good conduit work would fly!
Bear in mind though, although a picture is worth a thousand words, a good description when posted helps a lot.
If anyone has a problem with getting pics uploaded or whatever, send me a PM, I'll get it sorted out.

Mike, you are correct I landed every wire in all three of those pics. What you can't really see is in the elevator control wiring, every wire is tagged on each end with its point id and where it goes. I went through 60' of labels and 1k' of 18ga thhn, all red to make the service guys crazy!

I am another type of "CAD Slave" - add P.M., Estimator and Injunear to the list for a complete description!!!

My new work deals with Warehouse Cold Storage + Logistics, so everything is either at freezing (0ºC), or below.

On the other end of the spectrum are Cooking Production lines, with huge processing kettles & boilers, then "Spiral Freezers" ("Tunnels").

Then there are the occasional Industrial Processing plants - like Plastics Manufacturing and such.

I will gather some job walk images to post here.

Texas Ranger



Man, I would really like to discuss your work with you!!!

Not sure if you know it, but i kind of like Railroads...

Scott

Here are some pics and info from ECN Member togol:

Ok then , we had to PM some cooling tower fans and motors..........:



First, make new mounts for vibration monitors, while we wait for the crane to get set...this day we had a brand new crane AND a brand new operator..set up took a while, the towers on either side are still operating.. it was also raining !:



Inside the unit, the little ladder is resting on the bad motor and if you look closely at the lights ...they all have some water in them, also the green /black slime on everything is the nasty stuff that may contain Legionnaires Disease.... but it was cool that day, around 40ºF but we wore respirators anyway, that's me staring at the motor:






In the mean time the operator finally figured out his equipment and the fan got pulled, then it got very busy because it really started raining, no one wanted to be in there very long .....so I put the camera away:




{Thanks for the pics Tom}

JCooper, from another 'Jersey Guy' to you..NICE

Togol: looks like an interesting situation!

Mike (Trumpy) good luck on the new endevor!

Hmm, I don't know if this counts, but:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DL4FJlAF5IA

I'm working on getting a parallel port relay board to control some of my traffic lights , as my Lights to Go sequencer board is at its limit, and I have 9 more lights that I want to hook up. The Youtube video is my current sequence, which only has a RYG through signal and older PA-style left turn signal in one direction. (But I might add a pedestrian signal

As soon as I get the relay board, get one of these old PCs working w/ Windows 98 and get all of the individual on/off times figured out and programmed, this will become a reality. Now if I could only find that Win98 disc...

Ian A.

OK folks, sorry to hold out on you, I've been flat out at work lately.
Here are a few pics from the dairy sheds, I've been working in lately, the first lot are from a brand new shed, we started back in April:

First up is a pic of the Hot water system, with 2 1000 litre cylinders, these are rated at 15kW each:



Next, is the milk filters and plate cooler, these filter and cool the warm milk before it heads to the 30,000 litre silo on the other side of the wall:



In this pic, we have the pump room, with the vacuum interceptor, vacuum blower and motor (18kW), compressor for the milk recovery system, controllers and a VSD, (yeah, that pipe in the back IS crooked, it's called fall):



The pad-mounted transformer:



Name-plate from the above transformer(how is expulsion spelt?):



The temporary supply, it poured with rain the day I installed this:



Finally, here is the sunrise, looking out over the un-finished yards (wood not included):






I have a tonne of other pics, I need to have a good sort-out before I post some pics of the rotary platform and other bits and pieces.

Any questions?, go right ahead!

awesome sun set!!

denny

OK Folks,
Now that I've got a rare spare moment here we go:
Here are some pics from a shed that was actually finished while I was there.

First up we have a general view of the rotating platform,
this one is what is known as an 80 Bail platform, meaning that when full, it will hold 80 cows:



Next up, we have a shot of the receiving can on the right and the sanitary trap on the left- this removes foreign matter from the top of the milk froth before it goes to the milk pump to the left, this is a 2.2kW motor, controlled by a VSD that is in turn controlled by a probe in the receiving can:



Here is a shot of the 24 Volt AC power supplies and milk pump controller, on the other side of the milk pump controller, are the vacuum controller and the master controller for the electronic cup removers:



Next we have probably the most critical component in the whole dairy shed, it is known as the Orbiter Gland, as well as sending vacuum to the cans, and milk out to the pump room, it houses a set of 8 brushes and slip-rings (3 phase 400V + Neutral and 3 control wires) to run the plant under the platform.
This gland must be in the absolute centre of the platform ring, if it is mis-aligned by even a millimetre or so, it can cause the pipe work to twist as the platform turns.
Above the Orbiter, is the Wash gland, this enables the milking gear to be washed as the platform is still turning, a real time saver:



From this next image, we can see that every bail has 2 rams, the top one is for operating the bail gates, seen in the first picture, the second one below it is what is known a a cup remover ram:



How this system works is, like this, every cow is monitored by a sensor on each milk tube that senses when the cow stops giving milk, the sensors look like this:



Now, when the cow stops giving milk, the cups drop off the cow and the bail gate behind it lifts up by vacuum.
One added bonus of this is that the cup remover ram will lift the cups up off the platform, to prevent them being stood on by the cow or contaminated by fecal matter.
If the cow still has not stopped giving milk by the time it has reached what is known as "cups off", the cow will be retained by the bail gate and will go around again.

Now, here is what drives these platforms, there are often, depending upon the size of the platform, 2 or 4 motors driving the thing, BTW, there is another drive unit on the other side of the track:



These units are also controlled via a VSD, a platform is not something you'd want to have to start Direct-On-Line

A look out at the yards, sorry no sunrise this time, but these ones are actually finished.
What we have here is two backing gates and a top gate, the backing gates are driven by water pressure, with the added advantage, that it cleans the yards at the same time as they are moving.
The top gate is used to move cows towards the shed.
You might notice small chains hanging from the bar on it, these are charged with an electric fence energiser, that is modified to only give the cows a mild shock, not like out in the fields:



Here is a look at the power unit for the backing gates themselves:




OK, that's about it for now, if anyone has any questions at all, please just ask.

NO WONDER our milk cost so much

Geez look at all that stainless steel!

~Matt

I don't think the cows are giving milk, the farmer is taking it :). Cool stuff, how many total critters are there and how many do they milk on average??

John,
Farm sizes do vary widely, it can mean anything from as little as 600 cows, right up to 2000 cows.
Most places milk twice a day, starting very early in the morning and finishing later in the morning, depending upon the number of cows to be milked, milking then begins again in the afternoon and ends in the evening.
Some farms here are moving to once a day milking, it seems to be easier on both the cows and the workers.

Just for comparison, I once visited quite a number of milking operations in Israel.

First, Israel asserts to have the most modern, most efficient, most productive milking industry in the world. They make the assertion - not I - nor was I in any position to evaluate the statistics given me at the time.

Their 'typical' dairy operation has about 250 producing cows. The cows are milked three times a day. That's every day - the cows can't take a day off! Being even an hour late causes the animals considerable distress.

While there are some 'carousels,' the preferred arrangement is two parallel lines, with a work deck between them.

Controls are a bit interesting. At each station, one can direct the milk from that particular cow to a holding area. For example, milk from sick cows is dumped, and milk from nursing cows is set aside for the calves.

I've been on many diary farms as a spectator. Its interesting to watch the farmer bring the critters in after being out in fields all day, they go right to there stall without proding. They line up the same way at the same time every day. The modern farms in Maine know how much milk comes from each cow and a computer figures how much that cow gets for feed based on milk given.It's so different than what one might imagine. Some farms in the midwest milk as many as 3000 cows. The manure is used to produce electricity(methane). Not sure if city folks understand how much manure 3000 head produces

You're right! I thought it was 3000 tails that produced all that manure. Good pix!
Joe

John,
The shed you describe would be known as a Herring-bone shed here, the dairy industry started to move away from them in the early 90's.

Also, with the big money put into these rotary sheds, you'd sort of hope that the automation was equally as good.
Fortunately it is (for my sake), it is just a job and a half explaining to (sometimes foreign) workers, how this system works and how to use it properly.
Obviously, it isn't rocket science to operate a dairy shed (as most of it is automated), but some things can get lost in the interpretation.
But have one valve in the wrong place and you can have wash water or even acid mixed with milk in the silo.
Believe me, it HAS happened before.
20,000 litres of milk down the drain.

Yeah mate,
If anyone ever wants to get into fitting these sheds, expect to have good TIG welding skills.
I thought I was a good TIG welder before one of the fitters asked me to weld up a 4" 90 degree bend to a straight length of pipe, down in a pit full of water, the filler rod kept getting caught on the edge of the pit and turning the thing was a real nuisance, as the straight pipe had been run through a length of 6" PVC as a ducting when the concrete floor was poured.

At least I had water to wash the pickling acid off the weld, which is usually a rarity in a new shed, I just rung my overalls out.

Great photo's Mike, That South Island sunset is truely beautifull.
Interesting stuff you do there, amazing machinery with all those automatic options.
I noticed the double sleeving on the wiring to the meter when front mounted. (new rules?)
Our house computer has completely crashed, (misses recovered instead of restore hard drive, so all data gone) so I acces ECN from work and had some extra time to read some more posts etc.

Thanks, Ray

Umm, as mentioned above, it's actually a sun-rise.



Funny you should point that out, Ray, that cable would normally be provided and installed by the local lines company, they found out I was doing the shed so they got me to install the cable from the transformer and the earth stake at the same time as well as the metering, GRRR.
Talk about taking liberties!
I'm not sure why I sleeve the 3 phase wires red, it's just a habit I have with temporary supplies.

Our company won't allow cameras in the plant, but here's a short list of the odd things here at work:

400 VDC static discharge precipitators, 40 ft tall and 10 feet square, made in 1960s

Anything in the mine powered by electricity is fed from "mobile" 4160vac transformers and there are several mobile 480vac xfmers at each heading

480vac control voltage starters on about half the motors, etc...not for the faint of heart

Other than that just boilers, oil heater and the like that the mechanics are afraid of...here if the wrench boys don't like it we do it

OOPs...I forgot the KV in the output DC of the precipitator, it's actually 53.6 KV. We just had to change out the 100 HP fan that draws the air through this thing.

(posted for John Bowers)

Not something that I do for work, but I got to go on a PoCo-sponsored (Portland General Electric) tour of a hydro plant and a wind farm. Pictures are located here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/noderaser/sets/72157617691920124/

The wind farm is Biglow Canyon, a project with Vestas and Siemens turbines in the Columbia River Gorge near Wasco and Rufus, Oregon. Its design capacity (when completed) will be 400 MW. It is located on private farmland; the turbines and substation are owned by Portland General Electric.

The dam is Bonnveille Dam, the lowest dam on the Columbia River, which first opened in 1937. After a second powerhouse was constructed in 1981, it now has a design capacity of 1100 MW. It is owned and operated by the Army Corps of Engineers.

Distribution and sale of the power from both facilities is done by the Bonneville Power Administration.

Oh, man, I see how it is! Sort of a "my hydro-plant is bigger than your hydro-plant" competition!

-John

PGE does have their own hydro facilities, but Bonneville belongs to Uncle Sam...

Didn't mean to steal your thunder... Had meant to post those a while ago, but forgot and your post reminded me.

And now for something completely different.

This from Alan Belson:

i take it that you like hard wood?

Alan:
Mighty fine woodworking cratftsmanship!

Nice work.
We are heavily into wood and natural stone too. That is strange to Florida people. We have neighbors who said we built a hunting cabin here.

Alan,
I have to agree with the concensus here, this stuff is absolutely mint.

You were saying that this is your 11th staircase in 10 years, I find that fact in itself, pretty mind-blowing, especially when I see pictures like this, it's obvious that these things aren't merely chopped up with a saw and nailed together.

The design and planning that goes into one of these projects must be huge.

BTW, I must say I like Mrs B's finishing work, timber should always be shown as timber.

I know of some people that had a really ornate 1920's staircase (made of heart rimu) in their house.
They sanded all the french polishing off of it and painted it (get this) Gloss White, because the new wall-paper clashed with it.

Oddly enough Alan,
Where do you get exotic timbers like Cedar of Lebanon from?
Exotic timber over here has more or less died out (the supply of I mean), about the most exotic sort of thing we can get here is Jarrah, and that is from Aussie.

One last question,
How are them "snails" at the bottom of the stair rails made?
It looks like a lot of work in them alone.

Mike,
Cedar of Lebanon has been a popular park tree in northern europe for centuries, but rarely comes on the market for that reason. This one fell in a storm in 1999 in a friend's garden- in fact it fell through his roof so it was a double whammy! I bought the trunk and several other trees and had the lot [ 900 cubic feet! ] boarded at a local mill, and I sold a lot of it on, including most of a Sequoia [?] Giant Redwood, which is now cladding a workshop in Ireland. Weird bark, like coconut fibre and it stinks!

Cedar works up well, dries fast [ it's a softwood] and smells divine, which is probably why the Pharoahs used it it building their tombs. Municipal or park trees are lost all the time due to storms, road schemes or developments, and I have bought a few. The secret is to get in quick before some idiot cuts it up for firewood or worse, burns the lot on site!

As to snails or wraiths, I just made an accurate pattern from birch ply and used a router with a bearing-guided bit to copy the pattern, flipping it over to do LH/RH. Other bearing-guided form cutters are then used to machine up and match the handrail section. It's 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration on projects like this, there is no substitute for hard work!

No mill nearby? You need one of these!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJOvnsMJHJ8

Norm showed something like this once , for hire, on NYW:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DtSuvwk5Ao&feature=fvw
Let us Rock!

Or you could build a homebrew, like this suicidal maniac!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c486ERD7-0