BSU Mechanical Engineering Technology Students Tour Smith Services
Earlier this month several Mechanical Engineering Technology (MET) students from Bluefield State University toured Smith Services in Princeton, WV. Smith Services provides motor generator repair services, performing large-scale industrial electric motor repair for companies throughout the world.
At the BSU Career Fair in late March, Smith Services Plant Manager Estel Owens, invited Dr. Dan Trent, a Mechanical Engineering Technology professor at Bluefield State to bring his MET students to tour the 8-acre manufacturing structure.
“We began the tour in the plant’s ‘dirty’ end, where equipment is received for repair and maintenance,” Trent said. “Next we visited the ‘clean’ area, where restored products are shipped back to the company that sent them.” Interestingly, a recent Smith Services project involved repairing a generator that provides power for a sizeable portion of the Bahama Islands. Shipping costs on that project were nearly $1 million, according to Owens.
The BSU students witnessed all phases of the inspection and fabrication process. “A highlight of the tour was witnessing how machine parts are inspected through a process of introducing a powerful electric (magnetic) charge to those parts,” Trent explained. “A solution containing magnetic powder flows over the part, and when viewed under ultraviolet light, displays defects in the part that are not visible otherwise.”
According to Owens, this Magnetic Particle Inspection technology is utilized by NASCAR teams to inspect many of the components of an engine after a race.”
(photo cutline)–Several Bluefield State University Mechanical Engineering Technology (MET) students recently toured Smith Services in Princeton, WV. Smith Services provides motor generator repair services, performing large-scale industrial electric motor repair for companies throughout the world. Pictured (left-to-right) are BSU MET students Barret Crawford, Casey Hazlewood, and Mayte Servin Ortiz, Smith Services Plant Manager Estel Owens, and BSU MET students Suravieve Robertson, Sabrina Bouldin, Austin Sigman, and Greg Dennard.
