Blog on the Lillypad
Tuesday, November 04, 2003
 | Piping and Big Machines
Gradually, I’m getting used to working around big machinery. Now I’m brave enough to go to the new building by myself with my hard hat and safety glasses, sign in, and navigate through the hallways and occasional air lock entries to get to the lyophilizers. These large machines look like vast torpedo bays but with enormous condensers on the back and double racks of vacuum pumps, circulation pumps, and compressors. Each one also has a liquid ring pump; and of course a maze of piping (some of it scalding hot) wraps around everything. |
It took weeks of reading manuals and drawings to figure out what was going on in these enormous machines. And then weeks of tracing the drawings through the real machines themselves and asking questions to feel this much at home with them. But today I went up alone (about the third time solo) to figure out how to document the vacuum pumps for maintenance. Now that most of the construction has moved further back into the huge shell of a building, the lyophilizer room is so silent that it’s almost eerie. I am alone in there---just me, these pipes, equipment, and several gallons of pressured nitrogen as well as scalding water and pressurized steam. I have steel-toed boots to wear up there, but today I went in my walking shoes. The boots are so heavy! But as soon as I walk in, I mark the way to the door with my eyes, and I always know where I am in reference to the exit and the eye wash station.
| But the two great lyophilizers have been docile giants so far, as long as I treat them with respect. Today I climbed into the network of piping to inspect the vacuum pumps. I had to determine if we use a gas-ballast solenoid for control. And I had to check to see how many filters have been fitted onto each pump. Much to my surprise, the configuration of the pumps has changed since last I visited them. New piping has been bolted onto the inlets. But I figured things out and returned to my desk in the tech writer trailer to write it up. |  |
