Dowding & Mills helps alstom to power up California

The energy crisis in Southern California last summer was a distant problem to most people. But it became a lot closer home to home for Dowding & Mills when it was called in by Nuneaton Precisions to help with a rapid response manufacture of a turbine rotor thrust bearing.

Southern California Electric USA experienced the failure of one of its generators as Californian sweltered under the highest temperatures of the year and suffered from weeks of power-cuts. It came under immense pressure at State Governor level to resolve the situation quickly and the OEM, ALSTOM, was called in to assist.

ALSTOM then contracted Nuneaton Precisions to manufacture replacement components for the bearings from the 1200MW Turbine Generator. Nuneaton Precisions approached Dowding & Mills, with this extremely demanding project.

A DC10 aircraft was chartered to fly the thrust bearing back to California, leaving Dowding & Mills with less than 16 days to do the work.

Dowding & Mills worked around the clock for fourteen days in order to precision machine a new thrust bearing from approximately six tonnes of free issue rough steel forgings.

Representatives from Southern California Electric, ALSTOM and Nuneaton Precisions visited the branch to monitor progress against the agreed programme two or three times a day. The replacement bearing was finished and ready for air-freighting one day ahead of schedule and the generator was actually operational in California a whole week ahead of the programme.

By all accounts the end user representatives were extremely impressed with Dowding & Mills’ attitude, response, facilities and associated resources.