Request for Hydraulic Testing Facility Use

Colorado Section members,

My name is Dave Dummer, and I am an ASME Centennial Section officer from up in Northern Colorado. I work for GE Energy in Loveland, where we do steam turbine controls upgrades. Our current project requires some tests to be run on some equipment. Specifically, we need to test 20 actuator/spring housing assemblies for a full stroke actuation time. We use the actuator to open a large steam valve, and the integral spring to force the valve closed. The test would involve driving the hydraulic cylinder against the spring to its full open position, then releasing a quick dump of the hydraulic fluid holding the cylinder open. From that event until the spring returned the hydraulic cylinder to its fully retracted position is the time we are looking to validate. The requirement that we are not able to cover in-house is that the test must be conducted using phosphate ester hydraulic fluid. This fluid has an approximate specific gravity of 1.1. I am hoping that there is a facility in the area that would have a 1600 psig phosphate ester hydraulic supply on some form of test stand, and that they would be willing to contract time on that resource.

David Dummer, P.E.
Lead Engineer - Mechanical Systems
GE Infrastructure, Energy Control Services OC Projects Engineering 3800 North Wilson Ave Loveland, Colorado 80538 david.dummer@ge.com
970-461-5394 office
970-461-5204 fax
509-355-1524 fax internet
http://www.ge.com/energy
http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidldummer