New method for repair of broken bolts

Davo

Davo

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The Royal Navy has ordered an urgent investigation amid claims that workers on a Trident nuclear armed submarine fixed broken bolts in the vessel’s reactor chamber using glue.

The faulty repairs on the cooling pipes aboard the HMS Vanguard were found after one of the bolts fell off during an inspection, the Sun reported.


The bolt heads originally came off due to over-tightening. But, rather than replacing the damaged shafts, staff at the defence contractor Babcock implemented a quick fix and glued them back on.

Engineers at the contractor reported it as a procedural glitch after the problem was found, but did not mention the botched nature of the repair.
 
There was a big scandal a few years back involving counterfeit Aircraft Quality Nuts and Bolts. Proper ones cost heaps, good to know your wings don't snap off if they get loaded hard. Bodged Nuclear stuff is a whole new level of Insanity.
 
Bogus parts and improperly parts are a problem that rears its ugly head in aviation. Lost a fellow pilot almost two years ago due to a blade strap pin being made from the wrong metal. Lost a main rotor blade inflight.
If anyone wants to read the report it will give you the shivers but I can share it if you like.

Jim
 
I once installed a “blade chuck” light in the annunciator panel of a Bell 206 for the benefit of oil rig passengers. My pilot would then give them the lecture about the one blade perfect propellor, telling them that the light was to tell the pilot that he was now flying on one blade and needed maintenance.
This was Eugene Island 329, a production platform in the Gulf of Mexico, the same one that Kris Kristofferson flew out of between his Army days and his move to Nashville. We were both working for PHI, Petroleum Helicopters Inc.
 
Alzero said:
I once installed a “blade chuck” light in the annunciator panel of a Bell 206 for the benefit of oil rig passengers. My pilot would then give them the lecture about the one blade perfect propellor, telling them that the light was to tell the pilot that he was now flying on one blade and needed maintenance.
This was Eugene Island 329, a production platform in the Gulf of Mexico, the same one that Kris Kristofferson flew out of between his Army days and his move to Nashville. We were both working for PHI, Petroleum Helicopters Inc.
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I can appreciate the humour but I wouldn't recount that story around the Canadian helicopter industry for another year or two. Still a touchy subject as the pilot who died was known and liked by many!

Jim

P.S. I used to have a sticker in the cockpit back in the helilogging days. It was meant for the lowtime co-pilots.
It said "If it is Red or Dusty .... Don't Touch It!"
Surprising how many of them took it seriously.
 
Somewhat aligned, counterfeit electronic parts, as most factory markings are done with laser engraving ( angle of view critical ) there is the ever present major problem of inferior parts being re-engraved as higher spec parts. You replace a faulty electronic part and it fails instantly with at times explosions ( some of the audio amps i work on are up to 2000watt ). Now only purchase from traditional supply house in the UK and Australia ( sourcing reputable supply chains ), broad industry problem. Keep a lot of old boards just for the prime specifications parts of a different era. j
 
Was on a boat that had a flood (uncontrollable ingress of seawater in to the people tank) at full diving depth. A bolt in phossy-bronze six valve chest used for distributing seawater at sea pressure had given way. One of the blind holes that had been drilled to fasten a valve had been drilled too deep and had breached the internal cavity and over time a bolt had rusted from the inside.
Nothing concentrates the mind as much as a loud bang and the rush of water and the EOP of bow up, power up and blow main ballast like buggery.
 
helicopterjim said:
Bogus parts and improperly parts are a problem that rears its ugly head in aviation. Lost a fellow pilot almost two years ago due to a blade strap pin being made from the wrong metal. Lost a main rotor blade inflight.
If anyone wants to read the report it will give you the shivers but I can share it if you like.

Jim
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I remember reading that report. Absolutely shocking and no chance to do anything for the pilot.

Quite an eye opener to read how this developed and what consequences a chain of events in production/QA can have. I use this as an example when people think certain QA / documentation procedures are exaggerated. Usually shuts them down quickly.
 
we had a number of drill pipe failures in Siberia when drilling for BP, before the program started BP threw US$6,000,000 at each rig to upgrade them as they were both pieces of Russian crap, at the end of that money spend we still had two pieces of Russian crap but now we had decent pumps, Top drives, and importantly brand new drill strings
So we drilled two holes on each rig and than started to have down hole drill pipe failures where we would develop a split in the pipe and lose pump pressure. When you are pumping 560 gallons/minute at 5,000 psi a leak in the pipe means the fluid will cut the pipe in half in no time

Pipe we bought was high tensile S135 drill pipe as drilling program was vertical to 2,500 meters and then directional through to horizontal but high tensile pipe is susceptible to hydrogen embrittlement. There had been a few holes drilled in that gas field in the past with no record of any H2S being recorded, plus we have H2S sensors and alarms all over the rigs to warn us if it is present and we had zero record of any sour gas

Cut the damaged sections out of 6 pipes and sent them to a specialist lab in the UK along with all the provided documentation that was supplied with the pipe in the first place, report came back hydrogen embrittlement

Steel was manufactured in France and shipped to Germany where it was rolled and pierced into pipe
The pipes were then shipped to China where they machined and friction welded on the Tool joints
We were surprised the pipe actually went to China at all as we purposely chose the Mannesmann tender to avoid China
Report concluded that after the pipe was finished it was stored outside in the open before being shipped to Siberia and while it was in the open in China the acid rain that they experience in that steel manufacturing area was the sole cause of the hydrogen embrittlement
 
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redax5 said:
drilling program was vertical to 2,500 meters and then directional through to horizontal
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I'm fascinated that you can bore a hole vertically down 2,5km into the ground then steer it to go horizontal.

When I worked for the electricity authority, we had to install EHV transmission lines that sometimes went underground. On one occasion we had to go under a river about 100m wide, so we hired a drilling contractor to bore a hole under the river. The drill rig that bored the hole had to go down into the ground, under the river and pop up in the allocated spot on the other side. From drill entry to exit was about 500m horizontally, and they hit the target spot on. I still have no idea how the drill rig operator knew where the drill tip was and how they got it to come out of the ground in exactly the right spot on the other side of the river. They finished the job by pulling a 150mm diameter HDPE pipe through the hole as a conduit for the 200kV electrical cables.

My curiosity is such that I'm going to have to do some reading about directional drilling.
 
Spent some time hearing Reds horizontal drilling stories and pumping MUD. Another more Art than Science thing, hard to believe when you brake normal people-type drill bits all the time they can change direction over huge distances and not constantly snap.
 
Cam,
Have a look at the control panel of a horizontal bore rig, like a Ditch Witch. I agree that it is hard to imagine a horizontal bore being that precise.
 
I’ve had a bit of directional drilling done (toy stuff for mains cables, not Red’s proper oil rig stuff 😉), the drill head has a transmitter in it and a bloke walks around above it monitoring where it is, like a cable locator.
The operator that I used never did a job unless he had a digger on site, ready to dig up the drill head if something went wrong, hellishly expensive apparently!
 
Drilling for oil sounds very complex and expensive, Red. Big dollars in investment and big profits. Some very smart people behind the engineering in those rigs!
 
Andy said:
I’ve had a bit of directional drilling done (toy stuff for mains cables, not Red’s proper oil rig stuff 😉), the drill head has a transmitter in it and a bloke walks around above it monitoring where it is, like a cable locator.
The operator that I used never did a job unless he had a digger on site, ready to dig up the drill head if something went wrong, hellishly expensive apparently!
Click to expand...
The RF head and receiver wand will only work up to a depth of approx 120cm, if power lines run close by no signal is detected.
Horizontal bores under public roads will reach a depth of 3-7 meters, this is were the experienced operator comes in.
Drill heads are around € 1100 each, diamond studded to cut through granite or other hard rock.
 
I had to venture under the sea floor following the tunnel(s) being dug for water collection when the desalination plant was being built at Wonthaggi near Phillip Island to repair an optic fibre cable. Was interesting as fuck 😀
 
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