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We had a nice little fire on our process line today at work.
Unrelated:
I got to play around inside one of our 4mva dry type cast coil transformers... Big time maintenance.
Each coil is epoxy molded and stands about 7' high.
This type of transformer is used for severe duty in heavy industury. There is no reason they shouldn't last 100 years. We're hoping we don't find anything during this maintenance check.
This is a ton of wire. Runs under ground about 40'.
13200 volts fused @ 100 amps
These were installed in 1997, take a look at how shiny everything is still.
Yup, i fixed the fan. Fun fact, i've never actually had the fans come on under normal operation. I think they're set to 90C
And we have two of them.
Our electric bill hovers around $50,000 a month.
You can see how easily fires start.
Jeebus...
I mean, I'm used to working with machines that operate at dozens of kV, bu we usually measure the plate / beam current on those in the single digits. They top out at about a megawatt, and those are rare.
This was the biggest amplifier I ever worked on:
(Not mine, but identical.)
Three Klystrons, massive cooling pumps and heat exchangers, made about 400 kW combined output. It was shockingly quiet when operating.
This is the transmitter I care for nowadays. Solid-state, air-cooled, downright petite by comparison:
I mean, I'm used to working with machines that operate at dozens of kV, bu we usually measure the plate / beam current on those in the single digits. They top out at about a megawatt, and those are rare.
I knew you dealt with some high power stuff, i didn't think what i had was even close.
How much does a TV station usually pay in electricity costs per month?
What you do and what you play with is WAY more cool than the clapped out, fire starting, broke down, used up equipment i deal with.
We do have two robots doing one job now, i think it's helping.
I knew you dealt with some high power stuff, i didn't think what i had was even close.
You're way over anything I've got.
After we shut down the NTSC signals and went full-digital, transmitters got a lot smaller and more efficient. It used to be that to transmit in UHF, you needed massive focused-beam tubes pumping out hundreds of kilowatts. These days, nobody uses klystrons anymore and even the largest transmitters top out at about 100 kW- most are far lower. Our digital transmitter, in the second picture of my previous post, runs at 20.4 kW.
Most of this switchgear is obsolete:
About the only really cool thing I have is this battery room:
Originally Posted by Erat
How much does a TV station usually pay in electricity costs per month?
I honestly have no idea- I never see the bill. Air conditioning is easily the biggest load we have- beyond that, we're not much more than an office building with an unusually large server room.
Up until the 1990s, TV stations were huge consumers of electricity. Massive tape machines, hundreds of CRTs, process air, lots of halogen lighting... Now our lights are LED, our monitors are LCD, there's hardly a videotape in sight, everything is solid-state...
On the plus side, I do have a keyboard with an F24 key.
Do you have an F24 key?
Originally Posted by Erat
We do have two robots doing one job now, i think it's helping.
(video)Whooh i think the video worked this time!
The one on the right seems to be recognizing parts by vision and accurately picking them up regardless of their position and orientation. That's pretty cool.
After we shut down the NTSC signals and went full-digital, transmitters got a lot smaller and more efficient. It used to be that to transmit in UHF, you needed massive focused-beam tubes pumping out hundreds of kilowatts. These days, nobody uses klystrons anymore and even the largest transmitters top out at about 100 kW- most are far lower. Our digital transmitter, in the second picture of my previous post, runs at 20.4 kW.
Most of this switchgear is obsolete:
About the only really cool thing I have is this battery room:
I honestly have no idea- I never see the bill. Air conditioning is easily the biggest load we have- beyond that, we're not much more than an office building with an unusually large server room.
Up until the 1990s, TV stations were huge consumers of electricity. Massive tape machines, hundreds of CRTs, process air, lots of halogen lighting... Now our lights are LED, our monitors are LCD, there's hardly a videotape in sight, everything is solid-state...
On the plus side, I do have a keyboard with an F24 key.
Do you have an F24 key?
The one on the right seems to be recognizing parts by vision and accurately picking them up regardless of their position and orientation. That's pretty cool.
What exactly are they doing?
exactly that. Both robots actually use a camera to locate. the big robot uses a camera to locate a hole in the part for racking on tooling we call a spline. The spline then gets placed in a bigger piece of tooling we call a work bar and then sent through our process. Anodizing. The big robot also unracks all the finished parts too. They are bulk pack.
I'm not sure if this part is specific to every manufacturer but some manufacturers use this part in their seatbelts to secure the belt and in the event of a sudden motion or sudden movements it basically locks the seatbelt in place. It could be a secondary locking device I'm not exactly sure.
Also, this giant plate with a very light hardcoat on it that just came out of the nitric.
Fun fact, i've never actually had the fans come on under normal operation. I think they're set to 90C
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