Projects
Fabricate a Washer Drum
Canron Inc, Mechanical division, had won a contract to fabricate a washer drum made out of Titanium in 1974. The cell wall welding consisted of 3/16 fillet welds approximately 1.5 Kilometers in length for the entire drum. A cold wire GTAW automated machine was developed to complete the job with internal and external argon purges. The machine was further modified to weld the perforated deck in a record time.
Butt Welds
In the early eighties, 12,000 welds were made using the orbital welding process on a large scale, at the Combustion Engineer plant in Sherbrook, Quebec. Six orbital heads were used to complete the New Zealand Forest Product economisers in sequential welding operation with RT examination of the butt welds, improving the productivity and quality of the welding operation.
Boiler Tubes
The Thurso Shut down in the fall of 2011, was considerably shortened by using phased array UT inspection of the boiler tubes for the first time in Quebec in lieu of RT inspection. PAUT inspection was carried out over 9 days in tandem with the progress of welding. Approximately 50 welds were examined in 12 hours of working shift during this process. Welders worked in a duo, with excellent quality performance. 411 welds in 2" diameter x 0.165" wall boiler tubes, were successfully welded with a rejection rate of less than 3%. Spot RT inspection was used to validate the PAUT inspection conducted with the Cobra scanner.
Duty Cycle
Lean applied to welding audits called "CAP audits" were invented in 1997 for Air Liquide Group. The measurements included documenting the operating duty cycle in a welding shop and optimizing the welding duty cycle for productivity and quality through focussed training. The Lean audits permitted improvements in quality and productivity of over 100 welding shops around the globe.
Waterwall Tubes ForTthickness Loss
The principals of TVI, brokered an inspection contract for the paper mill shut down at Thurso, Quebec for Metaltec Inc. The 2011 shut down required inspection of waterwall tubes for thickness loss, replacement of some portions of waterwalls and replacement of three economizer bottom headers.
Strandherd Armstrong Bridge
Provided Quality Engineering services to the contractor erecting the bridge. Resolved issues with engineering specifications, materials, problematic ultrasonic inspection protocols and radiography for structural pipe butt welds on the arches. The Strandherd Armstrong Bridge was opened in July 2014 to public
Highway 30, 1.6 Km Long Bridge
The Highway 30, 1.6 Km long bridge was made from 84 box girders that varied in dimensions to suite the design requirements. The bridge was built by fabricating the box girders in Sorel, and then transporting them on barges to the Beauharnois site, where they were installed in place with hydraulic jacks to launch the bridge.
Metaltec Inc in 2012
The Principals of TVI brokered Inspection Surveillance contract for Metaltec Inc in 2012. The contract covered surveillance of fabrication and erection phases of the bridge contract for the highway 30. It also included RT,UT,MT,VT inspection of components fabricated in Quebec, Sorel and the erection at the Beauharnois site.
Pot Shells
Pechiney technology was used for the first time in Canada in 1984 requiring to manufacture new design of 484 pot shells, with 484 super structures and 9400 anode bars for the first phase of the project at the ABI aluminium smelter in Bécancour, Quebec. Combustion Engineering won the contract to build the pot shells with Lavalin Inc acting as the owner's overseer. Welding & manufacturing procedures developed for the project set a standard for manufacturing Pechiney pot shells around the globe. Butt welds joining three sections of pot shells used the SAW iron powder technique saving labour and distortion for the 484 pot shells.
10,000 Megawatt hydro electric station
Canron Inc was responsible for manufacturing spillway and diversion gates for the 10,000 Megawatt hydro electric station at LG-2 in Baie James. The scope included four heated and four unheated gates, stop logs, super structures and hoist mechanisms. Gates held their seal using brass tubing, requiring machining of the gates on their entire length with embedded parts. Electro slag welding was used on the drums for the hoists. Skin plates were butt welded using a unique SAW procedure with iron powder to avoid back gouging and rotational distortion.
Large diameter nuclear piping
Orbital welding was used for making lattice tube welds for end shields in the early seventies at DB. Later in the early eighties all the feeder pipe welds were also completed using orbital welding for improved productivity and quality at CE. Large diameter nuclear piping required elaborate butt weld preparation with internal scarfing while using consumable inserts at the root pass and SAW fill to pass 100% UT and RT for pipe butt welds
Gentilly-2 and Lepreau nuclear stations
Dominion Bridge ( DB) won the contract to manufacture Candu reactor Calandria and End shields for Gentilly-2 and Lepreau nuclear stations. Combustion Engineering (CE) Built nuclear piping for Darlington power station and feeder pipes for Pickering generating station. Also manufactured many heat exchangers for the nuclear power plants and air cooled heat exchangers for refineries