Planetary Gear box developed for BF-8’s Torpedo ladle
Central Chronicle News
Bhilai, Dec 17: Engineers of SAIL-Bhilai Steel Plant have made a mark for themselves by playing a pivotal role in import substitution by displaying their technical skills. BSP’s Engineering Design and Drawing department (EDD)’s engineers and technicians have used reverse engineering techniques to develop ‘Planetary gear box’ of torpedo ladles at BSP’s modex unit Blast Furnace 8.
Hot metal from Blast Furnace is transported to Steel Melting Shop 3 using modern Torpedo ladles. These torpedo ladles are in the shape of a capsule and accurate equipment like ‘Planetary gear box’ is used to control them. This equipment converts speed of 2000 rpm to 1 rpm. Earlier, this equipment was imported from abroad. As part of India’s ‘Make in India’ campaign, and measures to reduce import from China, Blast Furnace department handed over the responsibility of manufacturing the equipment in-house through Engineering Design and Drawing department (EDD). This challenging task was taken up by Banshi Tudu, Head of D & D section, Tushar Singh, Sr Mgr, Lekhram Sinha, Chief draftsman, Hemlata, Praveen Kumar Parker, A Nikhil who took measurements of all parts and made their drawings and aided in assembling them. This task took almost 2-3 months for completion. The assembly of all these spares, their performance and control were materialised through engineering calculations. After checking of all parameters, final phase of manufacturing and assembly was taken up by EDD’s efficient team. 96 drawings were prepared to understand the functioning of this equipment properly. After the process of sketching by the EDD team, manufacturing of spares, materials and other technical parameters were overseen by the department’s engineers. This task is one of the most vital and challenging task of EDD department. Due to the availability of accurate drawings by EDD, maintenance of this equipment will be easy and BSP need not depend on imports for this equipment. Substantial amount of foreign currency will be saved by the Company due to this intervention.
