General Electric titanium compressor case electron beam welding porosity
Appears in 2 lectures.
Appearances across the corpus
Parallel case at GE Lynn — $70,000 titanium compressor parts, electron beam welding, same hydrogen-porosity-from-residual-oil problem. Tom's free half-morning visit exposes the technician using non-reagent acetone; ambient dust contamination demonstration. Same fix.
Exact same thing up here on great big seventy-thousand-dollar compressor parts. It was an old engine — I was told I would research for General Electric at the time, and the guys said, "Tom, can you help us out?" I said sure, get some reagent grade acetone, because if you leave a little oil film on there, that's where hydrogen comes from. He said, by the way, this is an old engine, we don't have any development money, can you do it for free? I go up there and spend a half a morning. There were 17 managers and engineers from General Electric watching me do the inspection, as the technician cleaned the surfaces to prep them for putting in the electron beam chamber.
Ten-year-old titanium electron beam welding process at GE Lynn started failing x-ray inspection. Tom diagnosed contaminated commercial-grade acetone from a 55-gallon drum, and dust raining in a non-clean welding shop onto $25,000 titanium rings. Same fix as Engelhard: reagent-grade acetone. The technician got a letter of commendation; Tom got nothing. **Central case of §7.**
While I'm doing this next year's funding, I get a call from the engineer, and he says, Tom, we have some electron beam welds on titanium that we're making, and we'd like you to help us with it. We've been making these welds for ten years on this engine, and we always used to pass, but now we're flunking, we're not passing the x-ray. I said, well, Lyle, what are you using to clean this? He says, I don't know. I said, well, I bet they're using acetone. The answer is always acetone, right. I said, I bet you it's just commercial grade. Go get some reagent grade acetone and clean the welds with acetone before you put them in the vacuum system for the electron beam welds.