Two Established Tool Vendors Team Up To Ease Turbine Inspections

Everest VIT and Rhinestahl Corporation have compared two pre-existing products in a novel way. Everest make Remote Visual Inspection equipment, which looks to this non-technician like a fiber-optic borescope. Borescopes are used to inspect things without taking them apart -- you look through a hole and see what you can see. Two advantages to scoping an assembly rather than disassembling it for inspection are pretty clear: the time savings on inspection, and the ability to see the relationships of parts in situ.

Normally on a turbine rotor inspection, one mechanic carefully turns the blades while another looks through the scope. The two companies have created a marketing alliance that adds Rhinestahl's FutureDrive remote turning tool to Everest VIT's XL Pro VideoProbe, a flagship of Everest's line of remote inspection equipment. The result is a video borescope that can be used by one man for turbine borescope inspection.

The companies claim that this can not only reduce the man-hours by half, only requiring one technician instead of two, but also that the positive positioning control the intuitive handheld control panel provides allows that one man to do the job with higher accuracy and thoroughness in less time than two men did it before. As a result the total savings -- in time, and in money -- is more than 50%. This is not to mention the increased likelihood of the more thorough inspection identifying damage before it becomes a catastrophic problem.

The control makes it easy to flag blades for supervisors' attention or make note of any anomalies for future inspections. With a video borescope, Everest VIT's XL Pro VideoProbe, the technicians can actually store video of each blade of each disk -- and have it to compare at the next inspection.

The drive adapts to "all popular turbine engines," according to Rhinestahl. And the control unit can be programmed with the engine or engines you specify. If you develop a need to support a new engine once you already have the unit, you don't need to send it back for reprogramming -- it can be field-updated in as little as 15 minutes.

Everest's XLPro Plus is an enhanced version of the XLPro VideoProbe and can record and playback over two hours of DVD format MPEG2 video, or stream the video to another device via a USB2 port. Data is saved on CompactFlash media.

Rhinestahl has previously offered its FutureDrive system with other makers' inspection equipment, but not with the Everest VIT video borescopes. The Rhinestahl/Everest VIT system is sold by Everest VIT and is available now. The system has been tested and is in use with major airline maintenance shops and large Part 145 Repair Stations.

FMI: www.rhinestahl.com, www.everestvit.com