Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 8/12/2006 at 2:04 PM Don wrote:
No *kids*, eh, Chuck? ;) <wicked grin>
In a steel mill?
<grin> No, I was chuckling at your comment about
"not being able to line things up"... :>
These were big 3- or 4-foot long Pt/Pt+10% Rh
thermocouples. The wire was threaded through ceramic beats, then placed
inside of a ceramic tube, then placed in a larger grey-black outer tube
(SiC, maybe?). Used for temperature control in soaking-pit furnaces in the
blooming mill. That particular summer taught me how much dry heat a human
could take in short doses--the next year, a co-worker collapsed and died
while changing a thermocouple.
Yeah, I've found that heat by itself isn't *too* bad -- as long
as you don't interfere with the body's ability to *shed* it.
Anyway, the thermocouples got bumped during loading
and unloading the
furnaces and were broken pretty often. When repairing a thermocouple, on
of the goals was to butt-weld any wire pieces together.
Does the junction's geometry play a role?
A job that I couldn't do.
Do they still use thermocouples (dirt cheap)? Or, have
they moved on to things like infrared, etc.?
(I am always amazed at how slow many industries are to
adapt to changes)