Centrifugal pump OEMs claim they provide higher components, service, response and value than aftermarket service companies, however that isn’t all the time the case.
Until the early Nineteen Nineties, OEM restore centers labored solely on their products, espousing the mantra, “We know our products finest.” During the ‘90s, a decrease in new product sales triggered OEMs to vary their story and boast that their shops could work on any brand of centrifugal pump. Suddenly, their specific product knowledge applied to all centrifugal pumps.
According to the web magazine, World Pumps, six of the most important U.S. centrifugal pump producers of the Eighties have been consolidated into one, Flowserve. Many U.S. legacy manufacturers are still manufactured by Flowserve. During the numerous mergers and acquisitions, the U.S. Department of Justice forced the sale of some manufacturers to other manufacturers. Products had been disassociated from their designers.
Before the nice consolidation, every OEM had a chief engineer and several other product designers who employed a holistic design process, which considered the whole product, the interplay of its various parts, the user’s utility and business specifications. When a user had a significant downside, the chief engineer was known as to type it out. The lessons realized had been integrated into future designs and centrifugal pumps advanced over many years.
Industry requirements, API 610 in particular, were developed by customers to simplify procurement of quality tools and to improve pump reliability. New is a compendium of users’ experiences, which are often costly experiences. API 610 captures options to widespread centrifugal pump design points and best-in-class design features.
Computers loaded with superb software have democratized engineering. When I was a design engineering supervisor at Pacific Pumps, I had physicists, mathematicians, metallurgists, engineers, drafters, doc managers and a large team of people to create and distribute microfilm. In the early 1980s, we added a Fortran programmer to our workers. Today, that talent and many talent sets are on my desktop. Integral calculus is completed with a click on in MathCAD. Finite component evaluation of constructions, stress vessels and even shaft keyways are built-in into our solid modelers. Hydraulic element design software feeds computational fluid dynamics evaluation programs, reducing hydraulic design risk. Rotordynamic analysis software coupled with structural analysis instruments solves — and hopefully prevents — vibration issues.
3D optical scanners and laser trackers provide correct fashions of advanced shapes. Conhagen can duplicate any pump case in one afternoon and enhance it by the subsequent week. It can produce a brand new case or impeller casting in 5 or 6 weeks. The development of patternless molds — 3D printed sand molds — was the game changer for Conhagen, yielding high fidelity, reasonable value and quick delivery in most any steel.
Conhagen has evolved from a restore shop to a manufacturer that designs new centrifugal pumps or modifies existing pumps for specific purposes. Unique designs provide the mandatory hydraulic performance and mechanical robustness to reduce the entire value of ownership. Two examples of case replacements are included on this editorial — a four stage, axial break up, boiler feed pump’s carbon metal case was replaced with a CA6NM casting. The second example is a single stage between a bearings pump that suffered rotor dynamics points. Conhagen designed and manufactured a model new case, shortening the gap between bearings from 37 3/4 inches to 30 5/8 inches.
Conhagen has been in business for eighty years. Its products embrace detailed engineering calculations, manufacturing drawings, set up, operation and upkeep manuals, a one-year operation guarantee and help for administration of change reports. It is large enough to be responsible, but sufficiently small to be responsive.
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