Waching daily Jun 1 2018

Hello everyone, I'm "Little Frank" Romito with StoneAge Waterblast Tools.

Thank you for your response on our recent inquiry for a Q&A on tube cleaning.

We received a recent inquiry on tube cleaning within a confined space in an

evaporator in a paper mill. We have spent great deals of time studying and

perfecting a confined space positioning system for automated tube cleaning,

specific to one industry. This question was specific to pulp and paper, which

we're very excited to explore. We are not as intimate with this industry as we

are with the ethanol industry and we do know a couple tidbits. These tubes in

evaporators in paper mill for green liquor or black liquor are

typically 2 inch in outside diameter, leaving you with anywhere from a 1.8 to

2 inch inside diameter. We recommend our largest tool of the Banshee line, the BN33,

and quite possibly the Gopher, depending on wall thickness. To feed a

single lance, we recommend our tractor, the ABX-PRO. Today we will talk about a

couple of shared components that we're currently using on our confined space

system for domed bundle positioning in the ethanol industry and some of our

standard off-the-shelf components that may be used to get someone by in a

temporary custom solution. You may be familiar with our LWP-500, or lightweight

positioner system, commonly used with our ABX-2L and ABX-3L flex lancing

systems. The system comprises of a upper X rail, a lower X rail, a Y rail, an X

carriage that supports the Y rail, a Y carriage that supports a means of

positioning for our high-pressure lance or lances. What we have done in our

recent studies to develop our confined space system is we have taken our common

air motors and gearboxes and reconfigured them into a means of

positioning with an articulating arm that can reach around a radius and allow

us access to tubes along perimeters of confined space tube sheets. Here, what

we're going to show is a possible means to cover anywhere

from 80 to 90 percent of every tube, even along a radius within a confined space using

common off-the-shelf components with very minimal customization. Here, you can

see our X rail will move if this was vertically affixed to

a tube sheet. Our X rail will move from side to side to index, and our Y carriage

will move up and down to index. What we're proposing for especially larger

tools and larger size lances, today's example being a BN33, which can actually

flow up to about 50 gallons a minute through an 8 millimeter lance to be

effective in a 2-inch tube, we'd probably recommend running about at

least 20k at roughly 16-17 gallons a minute. So today we'll simulate the

positioning of using a single guide tube, a BN33, an anti-withdrawal device, an

8 millimeter flex lance, and our LWP. This particular size expansion plug is

used for an evaporator tube common to corn milling, with an inside diameter of

1.4 inches. We can easily increase the size of our expansion plug appropriate

to the inside tube diameter that you may be cleaning. In this case, we can make a

plug for a 2-inch OD tube, common to a green liquor or black liquor

evaporator. The operator will take a 3/4 inch wrench and compress

two hardened washers to expand the plug with in the tube's ID. They will then use

the flange clamps to mount an X rail across the sheet one way, another X rail

parallel for support, and a Y rail. Some commonalities between all of our flex

lancing systems is a collet. A collet is a means of an anti-withdrawal

device that will make positive contact with the swage or crimp of the

high-pressure lance. Today we'll use our collet coupled with our collet block

meant to snout up from our ABX-PRO tractor; this is how we will drive the

BN33. The purpose for using a snout or snorkel up to the work area is a means

of eliminating a tractor standoff coming back anywhere from a foot to 2 feet

back on your positioner frame, in a vertical application this would be

limiting your overhead clearance. What we'll do is snout into our front guide

assembly, insert our anti-withdrawal device as shown earlier, attach our

high-pressure tool.

Please note that the tool will house completely inside of its guide tube,

allowing an operator to begin under pressure and clean out of the guide tube

into the tube to be cleaned at full pressure from the start, cleaning the

tube from the furthest most point. We would now mount our assembly containing

the BN33, the guide tube, the snorkel, and our anti-

withdrawal device to our positioner. We can then adjust our means of standoff to

the tube sheet and simply tighten using only a 9/16ths wrench. Thank you for

watching. StoneAge is interested to configure a

system for any project you may have and configure custom solutions as well. It's

possible to use a mixture of off-the-shelf components with a couple

simple custom solutions to get you through your next job. Please contact us

at any time.