Work Progress - Days 5, 6, 7 & 8

Well, things really got out of hand when it came time get the motor running and we ended up having to stay until 10:0 PM (15 hours) on Thursday night, then we went 11 hours on Friday, 12 hours on Saturday, 8 hours on Sunday and then today we seem to be back to a more normal 8 - 5 schedule.

Many things have happened. We got the motor starter built and started by Friday afternoon, but we have had problems. When we got the motor to start turning, and about ready to synchronize to the power system, the synchronizer controller went BANG!

You can see the burn mark on the side of the cabinet.

It also burned a hole in the gold-colored aluminum heatsink.

We repaired it using parts from a second unit, then ordered replacements to be shipped in overnight. Then we have had all kinds of wiring issues that the electricians have been chasing down (mostly start logic). Then we had problems with the programming of the computerized synchronizing controller, then the motor protection computer started giving us fits. We finally got the whole she-bang running properly on Sunday afternoon at about 2:30 (this was after they discovered they left a feed-chute door closed and backed cement up all over the place around the ball mill). The starting system seems fine, we are now just doing 'busy work' putting labeling stickers on things and adding "Power On" lights to the cabinet doors. We were supposed to start on the second unit, but the supervisor wants to get a warm fuzzy before letting the team work on the next unit. Oh well, we have a salesman coming in tomorrow to let him know the extension of time is going to cost him quite a bit more money. Maybe that will put some giddy-up in his motivator.

This is a motor that looks like the one in the background that we are trying to get up and running.

And this view shows the ball mill drum that the motor is turning. This thing is like the old rock tumbler we used to have as kids, except the drum on this thing has plates (called 'liners') inside to protect the drum casing. This is because they load the drums with different sized cast steel balls in 1, 2, 3 & 4-inch sizes to grind up the materials that look like stone into the fine, gray powder called "Portland Cement".

Part of making the cement involves running some of the raw materials through a couple-of-hundred foot rotating kiln that is heated to 2500 degrees. There are two of them here and you can see the coal-fired blast furnaces on the far side of the room shooting the flames into one end of each kiln.

Here is a closer look of the blast furnace end on one of them.

They even let us have a look inside. Here is Tom holding a welding helmet with a special handle so he could look inside the kiln as it is running.

Another interesting thing is that they use this special gun to shoot material that sticks to the walls inside the kiln to loosen it up and make it tumble properly again. They say that when the material builds up, it looks something like a snowman, so they call it "shooting snowmen" in the kiln...

Here is one of the solid bullet rounds that they shoot into the kiln. Yep, that's an 8-gauge round, bigger than a 12-gauge shotgun shell. They have been going through about 100 rounds a day. We haven't been able to see it, because they shoot the snowmen in the kiln at night.

Here's Tom looking at a boiler on one of the floors of the cement mill. The mill is so big, I think it has like 11 - 12 floors.

Well, more work to go, it's looking like we might be staying until the end of next week. I won't know for sure until they hold a meeting tomorrow.