Olkiluoto 1 and 2 nuclear power stations. The third power station should go live in 2009 and will net a city with 1.6 million inhabitants. Olkiluoto, the worlds largest and most modern nuclear power station, with an output of 1.600 Mwatts, relies on German Technology. During the final assembly of turbine manufacturing at Siemens blades are installed to the rotor and measured in the housing. This is a balancing act between optimal efficiency and necessary safety margins between blades and housings concerning just tenths of a millimetre. Better efficiency with the employment of Laser Trackers The steam turbine which is more than 12 m long and has a diameter of 6.7 meters is currently waiting for the final cross section before distribution to Olkiluoto 3 nuclear power station in Finland. The free standing blades of the low pressure turbines are aligned to tenths of a millimetre, despite their mass and weight. 쒓The deciding factor for these blades is their distance to the housing, describes Stefan Hoeyng, Plant Engineer for final assembly of steam turbines at Siemens AG Power Generation. The gap between turbines and housings must be kept as small as possible, as the larger the distance, the more steam will pass through and this lowers the efficiency. Turbine blades are not allowed under any circumstances to come in to contact with the housing as this causes damage. During the final assembly large disks are shrunk and inserted into the bladeԴs groove on the rotar. Olkiluotos low-pressure turbine has a blade weight of about 320 kg. When the rotor is bladed, it is loaded in the force shelter with excess rotation speed to obtain an appearance of compression. Subsequently, the free standing blades are measured. ԓThe more exact a measurement system is, the smaller the tolerances for the distance between the blades are which improves efficiency, explains Stefan Hoeyng. An accuracy of at least 1/10 mm was therefore the requirement for the new measurement system. After some tests, Siemens decided on the API Omnitrac, thanks to its ease of use and lightweight portability of just 8,5 kg. If the housings are to be measured in the final assem- bly, the Laser Tracker must reach heights of 3-5 meters and a lightweight system is a lot easier to handle in such tasks. It is planned that the Laser Tracker will be additionally used on construction sites, for example when mea- surement revisions in the power station housings are required. > Press Release from Automated Precision Deutschland GmbH, O6,7, 68161 Mannheim, Germany Contact: Kay Wessin, Marketing, Tel.: +49 621 170 289 0, [email protected] size="-1">

Picture left: Steffen Linnemann (API) and Stefan Hoeyng (Siemens) examining the software. Five employees at Siemens are trained on the Laser Tracker. With the help of the special measurement soft- ware untrained employees can now measure after a short fundamen- tal briefing on measuring with the Laser Tracker. Picture right: The API Laser Tracker3. The decision for the API Laser Tracker thanks to it`s lightweight and porta- bility. With a weight of 8,5 kg it is the lightest of all systems on the market. Custom-made measurement software Additionally, Siemens has a specialized and easy to use software...

Automated Precision Inc. (API) Automated Precision Inc., founded in 1987, offers modern measurement and sensor systems such as Laser Tra-ckers, 2D and 3D Systems, as well as interferometers for coordinate measuring machines. API is the inventor of the laser interferometer, which laser tracker technology is based on. APIs headquarters is based in Rockville, Maryland/ USA, the European branch is based in Heerenveen/Netherlands, Marketing and Sales is based in Mannheim/Ger- many. API products are used in the aerospace, automotive and machine tool industry and by the manufacturers of coordinate measurement...