In the last post I wrote a story which was not exactly my own experience but experience of one of my colleague in the our section Mr JVSN Rao. I desire to dedicate one posts on my old colleagues of  80's in MECON - particularly when Rolling Mill and Auxiliary Equipment Division (RM&AED) of MECON was located in rented building called Apna Bazar Building - which houses Income Tax office now. RM&AED also was called United Wing due since we used to design and supply rolling mills under collaboration with Wean United Inc of Pittsburgh, USA. There was one company's who's brochure meant for Mr BP Sarkar used to have an interesting address "Mr BP Sarkar, Chief Design Engineer, United King , MECON, Ranchi-834002". Replacement of United Wing with "United King" matched well with Mr Sarkar's royal manners and we shall some time refer to Mr Sarkar as "UNITED KING" Our department was headed by Mr Ramadurai. Others were Mr BP Goyal, Mr...

In the last post I have posted regarding problem of heavy foundation vibrations of Entty Reel due to faulty instrument gearing arrangement and and how EPC was commissioned. In this post I am going to write a brief story I heard from my friend Sri JVSN Rao as reminded by my friend Sri Kalyan Bhattacharjee regarding visit of Mr BP Sarkar to Midhani, Hyderabad. In subsequent post I am also going to tell a story as to how low on money, we almost missed our flight back from Madras to Calcutta (that time it was neither Chennai nor Kolkata). Firstly story at MIDHANI. Mr JVSN Rao was posted on temporary transfer to Midhani, Hyderabad for commissioning of bar mill. That time temporary transfer meant allowance of  Rs 13.00 a day against Rs 54.00 per day for persons on tour. Since engineers from all other department were on tour, Mr Rao used for feel deprived. When invited by Mr Rana for beer, he used to calculate his finances since a bottle of beer used to cost Rs 17.00. During that peri...

Hope you may have read my earlier posts, I am awaiting more and more comments. This post is regarding edge guiding system by GPE, USA provided by MECON with electrical controls also by MECON. As per BHEL's there scope was limited to provding one feeder in MCC. As told in earlier blogs, BHEL was main electrical supplier and their 4-5 engineers were posted at Site for commissioning. I was a guiding engineer for Electrical works from MECON side, since MECON was involved on overall design and we knew complete project from incoming power supply to end connections. From Panel and transformer locations to cable route to main and aux motors and motor and ECR ventilation.  BHEL had experts of converters and power systems. However as a help to BHEL  I had taken over hands on  commissioning of  MCC (supplied by BHEL)  including building of logic as per our functional descriptions. However when it came to Edge Guiding system controls, BHEL threw tantrums that t...

I have put in this blog some technical and one semi technical story, hope you shall still read on. We 3 engineers from MECON - my self, Sri TV Vaidyanathan and Sri CND Nair had some  relief in between the form of engineers sent for small duration of 10 to 15 days. While Sri TV Vaidyanathan has relievers like M/s PC Sahu, Mr J Sahu from Ranchi and Subrata Bhaumik from Kolkata office. For Sri CND Nair, Sri SDR Kumar and Sri DD Sinha came as relievers. For me it was Sri SM Ganguly, who use to come over for approx 7-10 days after I did approx 45 days - maximum number of days not requiring Director's approval those days. During one of the overlap time with Sri SM Ganguly, we had a problem during commissioning of payoff reel. After it's controls was optimized by BHEL,  terrific vibrations in foundation were observed  during running and particularly during speed changes. The  vibrations was very power full as if the motor will break the foundation. After few...

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...

Sorry for delay of this post.. as explained in the last post it was due to non functional Broadband at our place.. During site work at Salem we became friends with many engineers of Salem Steel Plants many of whom were Tamils. Tamil are nice friendly people always eager to help. One of such engineer was Bharatan. He was a mechanical engineer with Salem Steel and was a quite person, he was staying in Salem Town and he will some time travel with us is our Car or Taxi. Any mismatch in coupling finsh boring or any other problem we shall face in execution of 2 Hi mill, he will be there to help. In electrical we had one gentleman called Anil Kumar a Malyali. He was a jolly fellow and we could go along well. Our Taxi operator was one Mr Goutaman, BA, -- we learned that educational achievements were added as part of name by some people in this part of Tamilnadu. He was nice person giving brand new cars as Taxi. Once her gave us a brand new big car from Ambassador family. This was centre of...

I promised you that I shall put up next blog on  8th Dec, but my hard luck.. broadband in USA was fast and working, having returned to India, I am struggling with the system of Government Owned BSNL to get my Broadband working... so many task in India you can do over phone.. but when in comes to phones you have to run, go, worship and many other things to get your phone going despite paying the excess billed amounts... God how we can achieve the growth in Steel or other sectors of economy? Forgive me my next blog is going to be delayed further...