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A History of GE Speedtronic Turbine Control

GE has a long history of providing industrial control systems for gas and steam turbines.

Speedtronic turbine control from General Electric is one of the world’s most reliable turbine control systems. Find out more below.

GE Industrial Gas turbine cross section — Cross-section of a GE industrial gas turbine

A History of Turbine Science

Gas turbine theory is not new to the world; in fact, Leonardo Da Vinci designed a reaction-type turbine. While nothing like the turbines of today, Da Vinci’s chimney jack’ used hot air rising from a hearth to turn an axial rotor attached to a roasting spit located over the fire. In this way, food on the spit turned without need for an attendant, harnessing the power of burning gases.

Early History

GE was one of the first modern companies to understand the power of turbine applications. High-profile projects like Niagara Falls (1918) and the Grand Coulee Dam project (1942) used GE turbines. The first gas turbine used to generate electric power in the US came from General Electric. It was a 3.5-MW unit installed at Belle Isle Station, Oklahoma City, OK, in 1949.

Expansion of Products

GE’s gas turbine division is now over a century old. It has advanced gas turbine jet engine design along with commercializing industrial gas turbines for the first time. GE turbines are also used for power generation. You can find them in nuclear power plants, combined-cycle gas turbine plants, and in steam turbine systems and boiler systems.

Graphic explaining GE Frame 5 Turbine Characteristics

Graphic explaining physical characteristics of GE Frame 5 components. Includes Models and shipping dates of Speedtronic series. — Download a high quality pdf of these characteristics.

Frame-Five-Components Download

Introduction of Speedtronic Turbine Control

Beginning in the 1960s and continuing through the early 2000s, GE developed and sold sophisticated turbine control systems for their gas and steam turbines. These systems sold under the SPEEDTRONIC trademark name. Speedtronic systems started with the Mark I series, continuing through the release of the Mark VIe.

While each system had significant improvements, many Mark I and Mark II control systems are still in active use around the world today. The longevity of these systems is attibutable to GE’s adherence to specific gas and steam turbine control philosophies. These emphasize “safety of operation, reliability, flexibility, maintainability, and ease of use, in that order,” according to company documents. The gas philosophy maintains:

Machine Vision is Improving Manufacturing Robotics

Machine vision can create a faster, more flexible throughput on your factory floor.

Why consider Insight 2000 Cognex or the Insight 8000 Cognex camera?

As sophisticated technologies are introduced into the manufacturing landscape, those who want to include robotics as part of their production line are looking for ways to increase the machine’s functionality, flexibility, and efficiency. This often means manufacturers are adding machine vision capability to their robotics to meet these goals. Cognex cameras are ideally designed for use as vision sensors.

Insight Cognex 2000 is ideal for use as a vision sensor. — The InSight Cognex 2000 camera

How machine vision works

For most of their existence, robotics have used sensors, PLCs, and coding to create their movements. But despite what we may have inferred from pop culture references in movies like Terminator or from cartoons, older robots have difficulty picking up and moving small parts, especially parts lacking similarities on all sides, like a screw with a tapering shank connected to a rounded head….or Princess Twilight Sparkle parts.

Is Maintenance Enough to Protect Equipment from Heat Damage?

Well-maintained equipment will pay dividends for years. But is maintenance enough?

Electrical equipment has the same need for air and cooling as human beings. Without a proper air supply, machines will flounder and fail. You have to protect equipment from heat damage, or they’ll die. But these expensive casualties don’t have to occur.

Pull out the manual for any equipment in your plant, and you’ll probably see a bolded notation stating its proper operating temperature range. Keeping equipment operating within this range makes sure those machines remain an efficient and reliable part of your operation, and avoids the cost associated with failures like unexpected shutdown, deteriorated performance, and shortened equipment life, not to mention the need to replace damaged equipment.

Sustaining proper operating temperature is especially important in CNC machines where machine precision can be affected by thermal errors. Machines running outside their proper operating range have significantly more errors than those running within range.

Is basic maintenance enough?

Basic maintenance is a good first step for protecting equipment. The primary source for damaging heat comes from within the equipment’s own enclosure. As temperatures increase, lifespan decreases: a 10C change can cut a machine’s lifespan in half. While new, clean equipment can easily maintain proper operating temperature, internal temperatures will increase as particulate matter like dust, debris, pollutants, or dispersed oil sit on the surface like a thermal blanket and create a topical barrier.