Welcome...

Morse Air Systems recently supported the Youth Mentor Breakfast 2011 hosted by South East Business Networks and The City of Greater Dandenong. One of the aims of the function is to expose secondary students to people in industry. The breakfast provided an opportunity for students to discuss their career objectives and to get feedback from those already working in various professional, manufacturing and service industries.

We spoke with students from various schools in the south eastern suburbs and it was evident that there is still a high level of interest in careers in the engineering, design and manufacturing sectors. This is important for us to recognise and encourage as these students represent the future leaders and innovators in our engineering and manufacturing sectors. The head winds facing our manufacturing sector are all too apparent; however these future leaders give us something positive to focus on.

Further to this, one of our key suppliers recently returned from a trip to Germany where he visited an engineering and manufacturing plant. Our supplier said that the Germans approach to design and innovation is something that we all can learn from. Also, their response to the question of why Germany has fared much better than the rest of Europe should be carefully noted...... "because we still make things..." was the direct reply.

Wherever we look we will see examples of how to do things and equally importantly, how not to do things. As a nation with a proud manufacturing history, we need to continue to develop our future leaders in the design and engineering sectors and remain committed to "making things".

As always, we welcome your feedback and any suggestions for future issues.

Engineering Excellence Awards 2011

Morse Air Systems was pleased to recently receive a commendation award in the prestigious Victorian Engineering Excellence Awards. The awards celebrate the world class standard of Victorian engineering and are an opportunity for engineering companies like Morse Air Systems to showcase their achievements.

Morse Air Systems had a project being evaluated in the Product Design & Manufacturing category. The project we submitted was initiated by VIPAC Tasmania, who had an environmental and occupational health and safety issue that needed to be resolved at Cement Australia's manufacturing plant in Railton, Tasmania.

Morse Air Systems engineered and manufactured a series of kiln cooling fans which achieved the following:
a) More than doubled the amount of cooling air compared to the existing fans
b) Reduced the noise levels from approximately 100dba to 78dba @ 1m
c) Maintained the same power consumption



The direct benefit to the customer was to eliminate an environmental and occupational hazard and to contribute to increasing the kiln life from 12 months to 15 months, producing significant cost savings.

The Awards Presentation was recently held at the Palladium Ballroom at Crown Towers and was a great opportunity to network with other local engineering firms. Morse Air Systems will continue to develop air moving products and systems that will provide clever solutions and ongoing benefits to our customers.

> back to top

A Bit of History

In May 1986 Morse Air Systems supplied a 2.2kw blower fan to a customer. Recently, some 25 years later, the customer called up requiring a replacement impeller as a rag got jammed in the fan. They quoted the Job Number from the name plate and we were able to reference the drawings in our archive system. We were able to provide a replacement impeller immediately which minimised the impact on their production.

Morse Air Systems pride itself on its extensive job archive system and fan design literature. This invaluable resource is on tap for our extensive range of customers and is a key part in helping us achieve our mission statement.

Our Mission Statement
"To provide our customers with a level of professional and personal service that sets the benchmark in the Industrial Air Handling Industry"

> back to top

Fan Impeller Balancing

Of all the components that make up an industrial fan, the impeller is often considered the most critical aspect. The construction and performance of the impeller are areas which are carefully engineered by our qualified team. We also focus on the "balance" aspect of the impeller.

All fan impellers engineered and fabricated by Morse Air Systems are either dynamically or statically balanced to the internationally recognized standard ISO1940-1 2003. A certificate of compliance is produced and recorded as part of the job file.

The balance of the impeller is achieved by adding or removing weight in a specified location. This is done on a hard bearing, mass measuring machine operated by a trained technician.

The loads and stresses that the impeller will endure over its life time are extreme. A balanced impeller will ensure that the complete fan assembly will run smoothly and provide the for the longest possible life span of the impeller and associated parts (eg, bearings, motor bearings)

We welcome any of our customers to witness the balancing process of their fan impellers.



> back to top

Fan Resonance - Other failure Modes

In previous issues we have talked about natural frequencies as applied to the shaft /impeller assembly. There is another issue that can sometimes lead to problems in operation, this I shall broadly term "resonance", but it is very similar to natural frequency, as you will see in the following description.

In impeller design we also need to consider the ability of blade to withstand vibration caused by factors such as machine vibration, turbulence and such like. Here are a couple of examples.

This impeller has unsupported blades and as such a simple "dong test" - a smart tap on the blade- reveals that it is acting like a tuning fork, likely a cause or contributing cause to the blade failure shown



Analysis of the fracture edge reveals a typical fatigue crack.

Tortional vibration is rare but can also occur. In this case the problem was shown to be the waveform from the VSD. It also has a devastating affect on the impeller, as you can see in this picture.



You can see cracking along the weld of the blade and around the rod (heel ring). This was a particularly difficult case, as the stiffer the impeller the quicker it cracked!

In a practical sense we can design to minimize or eliminate the tuning fork effect, but the tortional vibration example just shows you can only design for what is known. In this case it took many months (and broken impellers) to finally track down the source of the problem (the VSD waveform).

Morse Air Systems often get involved in industrial investigations of this nature. With our partner companies we have been able to provide practical solutions for a range of challenging problems in the field of air movement. If you have a difficult problem, or unresolved fan issues why not give our Engineering Department a call?

> back to top