Chapter 4: Tooling and Production

Balance Tooling

Balance tooling is a necessary evil. It is the interface between the rotor and the balancing machine. Tooling may be as simple as a special set of bearings and even an end thrust support. Tooling may be as complex as a dummy engine rotor with safety/windage shroud and special drive adaptor.

Any device not supplied as standard equipment with the balancing machine is TOOLING. When you need a device to enable the rotor to be located in the machine for balancing you need TOOLING.

Like the Care and Feeding of Monkeys

Don't you just love tooling? Looking after it is like looking after a barrel load of monkeys.

• It is expensive has to be light, accurate, repeatable, durable, special.

• It adds weight balancer sensitivity is related to rotor (and tooling) weight this means that tooling reduces machine performance.

So far it costs a lot and reduces performance what next?

Oh yes it wears out, gets damaged and goes out of balance.

Why do you use it? Because you have no choice! When you have to add tooling to your balancer it is important to get value for money. A tool that looked cheap when you bought it can cause production delays, damage expensive rotors; cause test rejects bad balance, and take too long to set up.

The point is that there are specific design features of good tooling that enable it to work efficiently and quickly and you need to know this.