This past Friday, October 13, 2017 we had the Flowserve Presentation and Tour at their New Jersey Facility. It was an awesome presentation and tour – thank you so much to Glenn Beachy and Dave Hitchner for hosting us.
Glenn Beachy started the presentation at 11:30. We ate lunch while Glenn went through his slide presentation. Glenn had multiple mechanical seals on the tables to inspect, plus he sent pieces of seals around the room to inspect. Glenn’s presentation was excellent and we had an interesting discussion with questions from all attendees.
After the presentation, Dave Hitchner lead us on a tour of the Flowserve facility. Dave Hitchner is responsible for Flowserve shops from Tulsa to Canada to Boston – he does some traveling.
First, we went through the machine area and viewed milling machines, cutting machines, etc. We were able to talk with the operators and ask questions. We had a chance to see all the equipment.
Next, we stopped at the machine shop computer programmer / machine setup. Keith show us how he would layout parts of the mechanical seal to manufacturing. He often starts with an already designed seal, and modifies it to meet the new seal specifications. Dave noted that all Flowserve seal shops are set up the same. So all tools are in the same order. Therefore when Keith completes the design on the computer, the seal can be manufactured in any Flowserve shop.
Another interesting option was Flowserve’s ability to do a rush job by having the computer program completed overnight at an India facility and then be ready for manufacture in the morning in the US.
We then toured the intake area where maintenance jobs are received and how they are marked and coded for safety because of which fluids were used with the seals. We saw the parts bin system, again the number and set up the same in all Flowserve seal facilities. Then to the cleaning polishing room. Last stop was QA in the shop.
From there we went to the CAD operator who demonstrated how the seal design drawings were completed, which would be sent to Keith to program the manufacturing machines, after approval.
The tour ended at 1:45 PM. We spend a total time of 2 hours and 15 minutes continuous for the presentation and tour – awesome!
Article by Tom Langley, ASME DE. Photos by Chris Kitson, ASME UD