# Jewel of the collection



## mmiller9 (Jan 2, 2009)

synchroscope


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## johnsmithabe (May 3, 2011)

like a monument in electrical history??


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## Mike in Canada (Jun 27, 2010)

mmiller9 said:


> synchroscope


 Yeah, that. You beat me to it.


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## johnsmithabe (May 3, 2011)

yes.. 91 year old machine.
Really curious about - hw they are servicing.


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## Phil DeBlanc (May 29, 2010)

Since it appears we have a winner, actually it's a Lincoln-type Synchroscope.

This device spent most of its life in a powerhouse in Rochester synchronizing the in house generator to Utility Power. This industrial plant operated cogeneration into the 1970s as a cost saving measure to minimize Demand costs. The plant was closed in the 70s when the parent company declared it obsolete and moved operations to another location. That meant the boilers were shut down rather than rebuilt, and the power house was more or less abandoned. When brilliant beancounters came along in the 90s the building came under new ownership and auctioneers were brought in to sell anything that would bring in a buck. The brilliant young people found it more beneficial to scrap gensets and steam engines than to work with people trying to save history for future generations.

By that time years of humidity had gotten to the instruments on the power house wall. That didn't mean certain "crazy" people were willing to abandon a wall of instrumentation. While these instruments may never again serve their original purpose as many as can be are being preserved. 

The first preservation effort was the GE voltmeter in the Exciter thread. If anyone is interested I'll post some pics of the innards and the preservation efforts. The Synchroscope will be the next project. I've been fortunate to find a clockmaker who will be assisting in that so no damage is done.

_Thanks to Google books the following information is available from a long out of print book. 

Lincoln-type Synchroscope. — The Westinghouse Electric 
and Manufacturing Co. makes still another form of synchro- 
scope known as the Lincoln type. A diagram of the internal 
connections of this type is given in Fig. 109. The essential parts 
of the Lincoln type of synchroscope are a bipolar laminated field 
M, the winding of which is connected to the busbars, and thence 
to the machine in operation. On iron core D, which is mounted 
on a shaft in such a way that it can rotate freely, are wound two 
coils, B and C, at right angles to each other. These two coils 
are connected in a "split-phase" relation through a non-inductive 
resistance R, and an inductive reactance X to the incoming 
machine terminals. 

The theory of the operating principles of this form of synchro- 
scope is identical with that of the power-factor meter. Article 
122, and hence need not be repeated. Since the relation between 
the deflection of the pointer arid phase difference is given by <^ + 
^ = 0, it can easily be shown that the angular speed of the pointer 
is proportional to the difference in the frequencies of the two 
machines. If the two currents start in phase but have fre- 
quencies /i and /2 after an interval of time t, they will be out of 
phase by 

e = 2Tfit - 2TrU 

Hence <^ = — 2ir^(fi — /2) 
or - = CO = — 2t(/i — /2) ; -. or w is the speed of rotation of 
the poinL. 
_


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## Rockyd (Apr 22, 2007)

Phil DeBlanc said:


> Since it appears we have a winner, actually it's a Lincoln-type Synchroscope.
> 
> This device spent most of its life in a powerhouse in Rochester synchronizing the in house generator to Utility Power. This industrial plant operated cogeneration into the 1970s as a cost saving measure to minimize Demand costs. The plant was closed in the 70s when the parent company declared it obsolete and moved operations to another location. That meant the boilers were shut down rather than rebuilt, and the power house was more or less abandoned. When brilliant beancounters came along in the 90s the building came under new ownership and auctioneers were brought in to sell anything that would bring in a buck. The brilliant young people found it more beneficial to scrap gensets and steam engines than to work with people trying to save history for future generations.
> 
> ...


Not off of my ship, mine was new ...but you could still manually close the breaker!


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## Phil DeBlanc (May 29, 2010)

Rockyd said:


> Not off of my ship, mine was new ...but you could still manually close the breaker!


Rocky, did you ever Throw Copper closing that breaker?

A good deal of repair work was generated by Junior Engineering Officers KNOWING paralleling machines was easy to do.


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## Rockyd (Apr 22, 2007)

Phil DeBlanc said:


> Rocky, did you ever Throw Copper closing that breaker?
> 
> A good deal of repair work was generated by Junior Engineering Officers KNOWING paralleling machines was easy to do.


ALMOST

One night on the mid-watch, the auto parallel gear wasn't closing. Needed to change generators, so I decided I knew better than the auto. :no: After a half hour of tinkering, and several attempts, i got the breaker to take. Thought the turbine was going to come out of the deck!!!

Five to mid-night, close....easy money - gotta go change the shorts!:whistling2:


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## Phil DeBlanc (May 29, 2010)

Rockyd said:


> ALMOST
> 
> One night on the mid-watch, the auto parallel gear wasn't closing. Needed to change generators, so I decided I knew better than the auto. :no: After a half hour of tinkering, and several attempts, i got the breaker to take. Thought the turbine was going to come out of the deck!!!
> 
> Five to mid-night, close....easy money - gotta go change the shorts!:whistling2:


In the 60s the PoCo here believed the salesman peddling those lovely locomotive size Diesel load grabber plants that were oh so popular. Far more cost effective to locate an automated diesel plant near the load according to all the young engineers. They didn't require anything more than 8 concrete piers and connection to the line the way the brochure read.

Oddly the "state of the art" starting and paralleling wasn't quite artful enough. On the good side the lifting rings were simple enough to reinstall, and a 100 ton crane was able to upright the machine and load it on a trailer fairly easy.

The engineer who was so damn sure got reassigned to a job he was qualified to handle and the other 5 recently installed machines were reconfigured to dead field connection. Us young bucks, at the time, listened very well to the Old Farts who insisted the machines not only be dead fielded but that they be demagnetized as well on startup for safety.


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## johnsmithabe (May 3, 2011)

Wats its technology? s it has any resemblance w todays technology?


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## Rockyd (Apr 22, 2007)

johnsmithabe said:


> Wats its technology? s it has any resemblance w todays technology?


???

Without a synchroscope, there would be no powergrid for America! How do you think the generators come on line to light your house?


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## Mike in Canada (Jun 27, 2010)

Rockyd said:


> ???
> 
> Without a synchroscope, there would be no powergrid for America! How do you think the generators come on line to light your house?


There would still be a power grid, it's just that your kitchen clock wouldn't be reliably accurate.


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## Phil DeBlanc (May 29, 2010)

Mike in Canada said:


> There would still be a power grid, it's just that your kitchen clock wouldn't be reliably accurate.


You haven't seen my 1952 kitchen clock made by General Electric where Progress was their most important product. It's made of real plastic with metal parts.


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## Big John (May 23, 2010)

johnsmithabe said:


> Wats its technology? s it has any resemblance w todays technology?


 Synchroscopes are still very common on paralleling gear. I'd be surprised to learn that the basic models have changed much, if any, over the years, it's a pretty straight-forward design.

I've only ever synched-in low-speed hydro generators in an infinite-bus setup, but they were cake. Is there something about the generators you guys worked on that made them so hard to parallel?

-John


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## fdew (Mar 26, 2009)

Phill, Being in Rochester NY, you are not to far from some nice old generators that are running One is at the Pageant of steam http://www.pageantofsteam.org/ and some more are at Cool Springs PA http://www.coolspringpowermuseum.org/index.htm

Cool Springs has some control panels wired up and working with the old generators.

Frank


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## Phil DeBlanc (May 29, 2010)

fdew said:


> Phill, Being in Rochester NY, you are not to far from some nice old generators that are running One is at the Pageant of steam http://www.pageantofsteam.org/ and some more are at Cool Springs PA http://www.coolspringpowermuseum.org/index.htm
> 
> Cool Springs has some control panels wired up and working with the old generators.
> 
> Frank


We're working on a couple over at the Steamshow in Alexander that are Diesel driven by Fairbanks engines. Unfortunately people there seem to think electric only comes from NiMo whatever the company is called this week.

I'm still more than mildly annoyed NY State dictated the DC machines from the Court St Dam in the Genesee River had to be destroyed on site rather than be made available to a museum.

We also lost the Bausch & Lomb powerhouse to a wrecking ball and even though I was hooked up with the wrecking contractor the City insisted on destroying machines. Just more reasons to detest politicians and their servants.

Rochester was once a magnificent collection of power houses and power house equipment, and we had manpower and equipment to preserve some for future generations to see and learn from. Preservation wasn't expedient though and politicians had money to burn.

I was here when Most of N Water St was destroyed for Urban Renewal, and I still regret not being able to get some of the plank floors that were in those buildings. It is far better irreplaceable old growth timber rots in a landfill.


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## piperunner (Aug 22, 2009)

Well thanks for sharing and yes we enjoy seeing more old time stuff this was the best post since i joined thanks .:thumbsup:


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## Jmohl (Apr 26, 2011)

When I was a kid, my dad's father in law used to work at an old navy powerhouse. He took me by there a few times to look at some of the stuff in there and I was duly impressed.. Some of that old power gen and distro stuff was pretty cool. Navy still used manual syncroscopes to shift from ship's power to shore power and parallel gens as of 2004.


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## cdnelectrician (Mar 14, 2008)

I just read up on synchroscopes, interesting! Not something us younger guys get to see or hear about at all...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchroscope


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## Jmohl (Apr 26, 2011)

Takes a steady hand and some practice to parallel using a synchro..... screw it up cold, dark and quiet...


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## backstay (Feb 3, 2011)

Jmohl said:


> Takes a steady hand and some practice to parallel using a synchro..... screw it up cold, dark and quiet...


We were syncing our hydro to the Canadians one morning. I was in the turbin room and my forman was at the dam. He had his hand on the tie control watching the scope, we ran a little faster to sync in at 10:30-11:00 oclock. He hit the switch at 6 on the scope and knock us flat out. He said his hand just twitched:laughing:. By now they must have sync check relays in all their stuff.


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## johnsmithabe (May 3, 2011)

@ cdnelectrician, thanks for the wikipedia link.


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## Big John (May 23, 2010)

I figured this would be a good place to post this: 

Took this photo this morning of a synchroscope in one of our small hydros. Also from the 1920's and still used to this day when phasing in the units. The lamps in it appear to be identical to the one I posted in the "Mazda Lamp" thread, and they both still work as well.

You can see 600V station power registering on the bottom volt meter.









-John


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## PATTBAA (Jul 29, 2012)

*Synchronization Analogy*

You have a 8 cylinder gasoline engine driving a load at exactly 1000 rpms. You need to add a 2nd engine to the 1st engine to drive the load.

The 2nd , "incoming" engine must be adjusted so that when it's applied to the load along with the 1st , both engines are rotating at exactly 1000 rpms, and the spark-plugs in both engines fire at the exact same instant and in exact same order.


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## Zog (Apr 15, 2009)

Phil DeBlanc said:


> Rocky, did you ever Throw Copper closing that breaker?
> 
> A good deal of repair work was generated by Junior Engineering Officers KNOWING paralleling machines was easy to do.


It was easy, my half power to full power line up record was 8 seconds, Thats 4 breaker operations including 2 paralell closures. :whistling2:

I was the testing guy for the Navys new auto paralleling gear, we had the fun job of finding out how far out of phase the breaker would stay closed. 14 degrees = 12 fire extinguishers. :laughing:


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## Big John (May 23, 2010)

Zog said:


> ...14 degrees = 12 fire extinguishers.


 :laughing: I've had the pleasure of seeing guys close in 50 year old breakers 180° out. When your gear is making noises that sound like a dying bull elephant, you know you've got problems.

-John


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## Zog (Apr 15, 2009)

Big John said:


> :laughing: I've had the pleasure of seeing guys close in 50 year old breakers 180° out. When your gear is making noises that sound like a dying bull elephant, you know you've got problems.
> 
> -John


Music to my ears


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## ampman (Apr 2, 2009)

phil thanks for posting this i love old electricial equipment


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## Southeast Power (Jan 18, 2009)

:001_huh:A year old thread and not a crap was given that day...


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## McClary’s Electrical (Feb 21, 2009)

johnsmithabe said:


> wats its technology? S it has any resemblance w todays technology?


Hard to see but the top pic is perfectly in sync and ready to grid tie, the bottom pic is out of sync.


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## frenchelectrican (Mar 15, 2007)

Zog said:


> It was easy, my half power to full power line up record was 8 seconds, Thats 4 breaker operations including 2 paralell closures. :whistling2:
> 
> I was the testing guy for the Navys new auto paralleling gear, we had the fun job of finding out how far out of phase the breaker would stay closed. 14 degrees = 12 fire extinguishers. :laughing:





Big John said:


> :laughing: I've had the pleasure of seeing guys close in 50 year old breakers 180° out. When your gear is making noises that sound like a dying bull elephant, you know you've got problems.
> 
> -John


 
The hard part was try to get three units on line without scychroscope so I have to resort to the old school methold which it mean use combation of light bulbs plus voltmeter from the control panel the first one to hook up to the uility side is little tricky and I really have to watch the bulbs plus voltmeter to get in correct pattern then throw the breaker in by one hand holding the prime mover fuel rack and second one for the breaker spring to kick in.

The other two is not bad at all it goes pretty quick once you know excat T/min of the engines ( I go by viberations so I know when to hit ) 

Merci,
Marc


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## chrisfnl (Sep 13, 2010)

I'm going to show my ignorance here now, but are synchroscopes *not* in common use any more?

I'm very new at all this, but all switch gear I've used is typically 20-30 years old... automatic mode usually closes the breakers, but I've had synchronizers fail, or just refuse to synch, and needed to manually synch the machines more than a few times.

Is there a new "manual" form of synching or do they just omit that completey on newer systems?




Jmohl said:


> Navy still used manual syncroscopes to shift from ship's power to shore power and parallel gens as of 2004.


Not navy, but I still often have to do it to switch from shore power to ship power, the automatic mode has trouble with it, our generator runs at 575Vac, and the shore power is 600Vac.


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## guest (Feb 21, 2009)

Zog said:


> I was the testing guy for the Navys new auto paralleling gear, we had the fun job of finding out how far out of phase the breaker would stay closed. 14 degrees = 12 fire extinguishers. :laughing:


Got any pics of the carnage? :laughing:


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