Salem 2 Hi mill -AGC Cylinder Commissioning for Minister's Visit

Hope you may have gone through my last post and enjoyed how I sent Mr DD Sinha to ladies toilet due to my ability to read Tamil but having poor vocabulary or how we gave lift to Mr Raju ED, Salem Plant in our brand new Taxi Car and enjoyed no checks at gate for next one month !! In this post I want to be little technical. Being far away from HO we had little or no interference from MECON's Ranchi Head Office and we did as we liked. There were no phone let alone mobile phone those days. Communication was through telexes or difficult to get trunk calls. We had 3 visits by Mr Subimal Ghosh then Chief Design Engineer, One visit each by Mr BP Sarkar then Chief Engineer, Mr BC Mondal, then GM and Mr PC Laha then Director - only 6 visits in about 9 months, we were at Salem all most at a stretch.
We were trying to commission the mill as fast as possible and most of the motors and hydraulic system were commissioned. Unlike earlier practice where MECON's electrical engineer will only stand or see BHEL commission the plant, I went ahead to do some hands on commissioning, which started due to a tiff with BHEL regarding scope of edge control commissioning (I will tell the story in next post). BHEL engineers at site Mr Kumar and  Mr Pillai agreed to provide me with instruments and one helper. Mr Sambasivam another BHEL engineer and In charge was a man who always read through contracts and was a difficult person.
NOW  to main story of today -- AGC system control were supplied by Siemens Germany and a German Engineer was to arrive to commission it. It was getting delayed since ASEA's load cell, Tensiometer etc were not ready due to faulty power supply. In the mean while there was a visit by Mr ND  Tiwary. then Minister for Steel. We were asked to run the mill with strip in the mill. Now this was not possible without Hydraulic Cylinder of the mill lifted from bottom to at least touch the strip. Here came my earlier exp at Bokaro handy, where we used to give reference from a battery box for UBCR (Op Amp) ckts. Moog valves were to take about 20 mA each coil for fully open the valve. I decided to connect them in parallel and pass 40 mA using battery box. Later we improvised and used  V/I converter of Simatic C3 modules to pass 40 mA and opened both side moog valves. Pressure of Hydr System C was adjusted using relief valve to a value to generate roughly 100 T of load and the cylinder lifted to touch the strip. We successfully rolled MS coil with paper winders / unwinders in use and no body could know that in fact mill is far from commissioning.. Next story visit of Mr Sarkar..

Comments

  1. Each senior visitor left different impressions on us. Late Mr Subimal Ghosh visited most and was friendly inspiring person. Mr BP Sarkar was a task master and went into the opened mill housing we use to avoid for fear of spoiling our cloths due to grease etc. Mr BC Mondal stood aside like a visitor and Mr Laha was on way to a board meeting planned at s hill station near by..

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  2. hello sir namasthe
    today only i seen your blog it was very nice.
    i am a senior operator of skin pass mill at Salem
    steel plant .i have experienced in SPM past 10 years.till now i am working there.ur memories are very nice i like very much. pl continue ur blog regarding SPM. I AM WAITING FOR YOUR BLOG SIR.
    THANKING YOU. P.SIVAKUMAR. SPM,SALEM STEEL PLANT.

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2 Hi Skin Pass Mill at Salem Steel Plant, SAIL, India (1980)