NEWS OF THE INDUSTRY Siemens Completes Welded Gas-Insulated Transmission Line in China Pennsylvania School Donates Sign to AWS Students in the Welding & Metal Fabrication program at York County School of Technology, York, Pa., recently donated a neon sign they built to the American Welding Society (see figure). The AWS sign now hangs on the first floor of the AWS World Headquarters building in Miami, Fla. The students were challenged to build the sign in 2012, and it took nearly a year to complete the project. Instructor Brian Yarrison praised student Jordan Mackison for taking the lead and doing much of the work. The sign is made of 16- and 18-gauge hot rolled steel sheet 10 FEBRUARY 2014 that was either hand cut or sheered. The students welded the sign using the gas metal arc process. To give an illusion of depth, 3- in.-wide strips of sheet metal were welded to the sides of the letters. The contrast of the yellow face of the letters with the dark blue sides also adds depth. Mackison shadowed workers at a local sign shop as they created the neon tubes for the sign. He was involved in every step of the fabrication process; performing the electrical wiring for the sign, and painting and powder coating the letters in an oven he built at his family’s metal finishing business. “In the end, as a welding instructor, I wanted to see the students start and finish a complex project involving many trades and disciplines including fabrication, electrical, paint, and finish, etc.,” Yarrison said. ‘This project did just that. I would say for 15- to 17-year-old kids, they did a great job.” IPC Hand Soldering Competition Winner Crowned at productronica 2013 Forty-three competitors gave it their all during IPC’s Hand Soldering Competition held at productronica 2013, November 12–15, in Munich, Germany. Jacek Majchrzak, PartnerTech, Poland, earned first place with a cash prize of approximately $680 (500 euros), a new soldering station from JBC Tools, and a spot at the IPC Hand Soldering World Championship at IPC APEX EXPO 2014 in Las Vegas, Nev. Second place with a cash prize of about $408 (300 euros) went to Baigyou Tamas, GÉMOSZ Elektronikai Kft, Hungary. Halil Ibrahim Demir, Tai Tusas Aerospace, Turkey, captured third place with a cash prize of nearly $136 (100 euros). Participants built a functional electronics assembly within a Siemens recently completed constructing a high-voltage, gas-insulated transmission line (GIL) for China Three Gorges Project Corp. at the country’s second largest hydropower plant, Xiluodu. It is located in the southwest of China on the Jinsha Jiang River at the Xiluodu Dam. The project consisted of installing seven threepole systems each with a length of 620 m. The GIL tubes are welded over their entire length to increase operational reliability and give flexibility for adapting to any changes in the tunnel wall that occur over time. Welding the GIL’s aluminum tubes required a hightech process. Up-to-date welding and ultrasound methods ensured quality, plus allowed rapid installation. Also, according to the company, the single-pole tube length is 12.5 km — making this the world’s longest GIL. Designed for a power capacity of 3900 MVA at a voltage of 550 kV and a rated current of 4500 A, it is also believed to be the world’s highest-capacity connection using GIL. The individual GIL modules, each of which is about 11.5 m long, were welded directly to each other in a vertical position inside the installation shafts and pushed upward, section by section, in the tunnel. Various branch offs and horizontal sections extend the overall length of the individual three-phase systems to 620 m. Looking upstream on the Jinsha Jiang River at the Xiluodu Dam, two of the water-entry openings are visible. The dam filling with water is ongoing. (Siemens press picture) Jordan Mackison (left) and Tanner Grove, students at York County School of Technology, proudly show the neon AWS sign that is now on display at the AWS World Headquarters building.
Welding Journal | February 2014
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