NVision reverse engineers steam turbine core

NVision's contract service division has reverse engineered the complete core of a steam turbine for a major original equipment manufacturer (OEM) in only six weeks.

The turbine rotor in this application measures 11ft in length and 6ft in diameter and was not available as a CAD model.

NVision contract service division technicians scanned all the turbine components in only three weeks, using the NVision Handheld non-contact scanner and touch probe at the OEM's site, and the Maxos scanner in NVision's Wixom, Michigan facility.

The NVision Maxos scanner can measure complex geometry, even if it has a shiny surface, without the need for spraying and is unaffected by the limitations of ball radius compensation, from which traditional coordinate measuring machines suffer.

NVision technicians used NVision software to convert the point clouds to STL file format.

The STL model was converted to a fully parametric CAD model, which took another three weeks.

NVision engineers edited the resulting CAD models by hand to correct machining inaccuracies in the as-built parts.

The CAD models provided by NVision were used by the turbine manufacturer as the basis for CFD simulations of blades and diaphragms that saved considerable amounts of energy by improving the efficiency of hundreds of existing turbines.

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