Testing Challenge:
A large manufacturer of Power Transmission equipment required an upgrade to their outdated production test equipment. The wide variety of products requires many 40+-year-old test stands to undergo maintenance. They have to maintain their abilities as well as validate products prior to shipment. Reporting test data was manual and paper-based. However, production floor space for any new equipment was at a minimum. Regenerative test stand options are also under consideration.
Innovative Solution:
The Power Test Engineered Solutions team reviewed dozens of customer product designs in addition to test criteria that needed to be tested on any new test stand. The range of physical mounting, hydraulic flow loops, mechanical coupling points and speed/torque requirements was extremely broad. So, the engineers designed a 2000HP, AC Common Bus drive/load system. This system allows for fast adjustment of the test stand. So, it can now adjust to all the product lines needing testing.
A 2000HP high-speed prime mover motor can translate right and left radially while mounting any large SAE bell-housing to the headstock of the input. This enables engine-mounted power transmission equipment or simple coupling of a large driveshaft to remote-mounted equipment. A 1650HP high torque absorbing motor can translate axially up to 8 feet. This leads to short coupling of engine mounted transmission equipment to long driveshaft mounting of remote-mounted equipment. The regenerative test stand incorporates dirty, semi-clean, and clean hydraulic reservoirs in addition to pumping, cooling, filtering, backpressure control and flow measuring of up to 8 hydraulic flow loops. The test stand design fits into an existing small existing space with the Power Test DCI team making floor modifications to accommodate installation. Electrical power stays at a minimum with the AC common bus design, due to the prime mover using the power it absorbs to run. It only requires utility power to overcome the inefficiency of the test article.
Result:
The flexibility of the regenerative test stand allowed the customer to remove several other test stands. This results in opening up more room for production assembly. The high-end PowerNet TD automation and data acquisition system allows operators to press start for a test and automatically generate a full report on completion. This report will print all pertinent data.