The depth and breadth of knowledge on this forum never ceases to amaze me!

^^ agree. this thread makes me feel a bit simple

Just imagine what would happen if we all got together to create a bike brand!

Joined RR from school as an apprentice in 1989, first a welder in Hucknall, then ended up as a Project Manager in Derby. Still miss the place, the people, and mostly the smell of burning Avtur from the test beds

I live across the road from RR Hucknall & now they’ve stopped using the test beds there, I can actually get to sleep after nights. Testing a jet engine to destruction is not that helpful when you need sleep! Mind you, the impromptu air show by the Battle of Britain memorial flight, when they come for maintenance work, is always fun.

Compressor blades are forward of the combustor so are in a cooler operating environment. Turbine blades extract energy from the exhaust gas path, so as you quite rightly say, operate in temperatures above the melting point of the material they are made from.

yep holes in the turbine blade… made little things – they have a tough life!

shame this happened…on the 900s..

but good to see the 1000 on the dreamliner

RR Aero is a proper world leader.

It’s a very interesting piece. Forty years ago, Rolls Royce was a niche player. Now they own Allison and account for a huge amount of the worldwide commercial market. Truly astonishing, but lets not forget that the merger between RR and Bristol has had a lot to do with the company’s success.

Yes, quite right – they are turbine blades!

Here is his demo case which shows the 4 stages of single crystal turbine blade production from the ceramic moulds for the cooling holes on the right, to the wax mould for the blade itself which is then ‘feather and tarred’ with ceramic before the wax is melted away to leave a mould for the molten metal to be poured into and some clever crystal jiggery pokery takes place. It’s then dipped in hot acid to melt the ceramic and leave the raw blade behind and finally machined.

rootes1 – is that the quantas plane engine that crapped itself a few months ago? It got so much press over here as does any slight issue w a quantas flight.

Interested in this thread, as my father in law was a machinist at RR in Filton, he is 74 and only retired last year, he has been there since he was 16!! They dont want to get rid of him as the younger ones dont have the skills on the tools.

rootes1 – is that the quantas plane engine that crapped itself a few months ago? It got so much press over here as does any slight issue w a quantas flight.

Yep – the red bit on the cowl is the remains of the Qantas logo.

Interested in this thread, as my father in law was a machinist at RR in Filton, he is 74 and only retired last year, he has been there since he was 16!! They dont want to get rid of him as the younger ones dont have the skills on the tools.

Probably true, though RR has a good apprentice scheme.

Si

Just remembered, I installed the ventilation for Metal Improvement Company at Earby (near Barnoldswick) where they laser peen the fan blades of the Trent engine to remove the stresses created in the casting process

rootes1 – is that the quantas plane engine that crapped itself a few months ago? It got so much press over here as does any slight issue w a quantas flight.

Interested in this thread, as my father in law was a machinist at RR in Filton, he is 74 and only retired last year, he has been there since he was 16!! They dont want to get rid of him

I can believe this when there were guys on machines that had spent more time with the machine than their own wife they knew when it was warm cold ,how much wear to adjust for ,simply amazing and when they are gone that knowledge and history goes with em,

1st thing that springs to mind reading this thread is, 1st time I ever flew was only from Newcastle to Alicante. On going up the steps to board the aircraft I looked at the engine on the wing & saw the RR logo. This alleviated any apprehension I may have had about the flight.
2nd was on a flight from Schiphol to Minneapolis on a KLM 747, the aircraft was named, ‘Sir Frank Whittle’. That made me smile.

The knowledge and sheer geekiness on here cracks me up! I love it! It helps offset the daily threads of “my gears slip”, “tell me about 29ers” and “show me your on-one” 😀

Yebbut…. how much of that aviation technology has bled over into sport and how much of it is used to make our bikes stronger, lighter and easier to ride?

I worked for RR between 96 and 02, in several different areas over civil, military, power generation and naval, Derby Sinfin (PCF, Morelane, & Rainsway, Hucknall, Bristol, etc. It truely shaped the worker I am today, and funded/aided my degree.

A fantastic company but and I love the product, but the PLC environment can be tough on workers sometimes.

A truly brilliant thread – thanks guys. Much better than the dreary “My car is faster than yours” ones. Any more turbine (or compressor)-based gems to share?

We use two RB-211 cores in the navy’s Type 45 destroyers. We use them in WR21 engines with alternators on the end to make 21MW each. Rather than just suck-squeeze-bang-blow we’ve got an intercooler to cool the compressed air and a recuperator (exhaust heat exchanger) to recycle some waste heat.

If you haven’t already seen this, you’ll certainly enjoy it:

Jet powered VW Beetle

Mintman, I worked in the special procurement team to bring the parts in for the first WR21 engines, it was in a mess and we had about a year to sort it out, back in 2001, small world eh.

We use two RB-211 cores in the navy’s Type 45 destroyers. We use them in WR21 engines with alternators on the end to make 21MW each. Rather than just suck-squeeze-bang-blow we’ve got an intercooler to cool the compressed air and a recuperator (exhaust heat exchanger) to recycle some waste heat.

If they’d only waited a bit they could have had the new 44MW ‘RB-211’ IGT for some real poke (actually a cut down Trent, but it seems the power generation market is happier buying into the RB-211 name rather than the new fangled Trent). Working on the first RB211-H63 onshore powergen sets as I type this…..

Here is his demo case which shows the 4 stages of single crystal turbine blade production from the ceramic moulds for the cooling holes on the right, to the wax mould for the blade itself which is then ‘feather and tarred’ with ceramic before the wax is melted away to leave a mould for the molten metal to be poured into and some clever crystal jiggery pokery takes place. It’s then dipped in hot acid to melt the ceramic and leave the raw blade behind and finally machined.

There is a cut-away of a Pegasus engine in the new M-Shed museum in Bristol with some video/commentatory of the process. Not a patch on the old industrial musem with room-fulls of giant radial engines and an a cut-away/’real life exploded view’ Olympus that you could walk around.

Yebbut…. how much of that aviation technology has bled over into sport and how much of it is used to make our bikes stronger, lighter and easier to ride?

I wouldnt expect an spf/db frame anytime soon,Though Orange did look at it for aluminium many many many moons ago.

Yebbut…. how much of that aviation technology has bled over into sport and how much of it is used to make our bikes stronger, lighter and easier to ride?

No aerospace would mean no tubes for Ti bikes.

Specialized old metal matrix (m series from 90’s) came from aerospace tech

+ general materials technology..

+ no Hope Technology!

Watched the programme last night – fantastic show case for British Engineering – the man hours that go in to each part are just incredible – so removed from the car industry where it’s all machine welded and semi-automated assembly.

Yebbut…. how much of that aviation technology has bled over into sport and how much of it is used to make our bikes stronger, lighter and easier to ride?

No idea what you’re talking about….. 😉

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByemtRt_CP0[/video]

On seeing an RB-199 run up to reheat on a test bed for the first time:

Me:”What are the lines painted on the walls for?”

Controller:”That’s where the blades will come through if it fails”

Me: *Shuffles to the right by a little bit*

A truly brilliant thread – thanks guys. Much better than the dreary “My car is faster than yours” ones. Any more turbine (or compressor)-based gems to share?

They are the biggest filer of patents in the UK, oh and I get to handle all the gas turbine related stuff. Stuff that won’t be on engines for another 10-5 years.