IntoMachines: Smarter Turbine Bolt Tensioning

Martin Kristelijn, the co-founder of IntoMachines, discusses
innovative tools designed to make bolt tensioning faster, safer,
and less expensive. The conversation highlights the challenges of
manually tensioning thousands of bolts, the advantages of automated
bolt tensioning for wind turbines, and the development of a
weightless, more efficient tensioning system. Fill out our Uptime
listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug! Sign up now for
Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind
technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard
Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape
Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show
on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit
Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes'
YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the
show? Email us! Allen Hall: With wind turbines growing larger
and bolts getting bigger, the industry needs smarter ways to handle
critical bolted connections. This week we speak with Martin
Kristelijn co-founder of IntoMachines. IntoMachines has developed
unique tools that make bolt tensioning faster, safer, and much less
expensive. Welcome to Uptime, spotlight, shining light on wind.
Energy's brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering
tomorrow. Allen Hall: Martin, welcome to. To the Uptime Wind Energy
Podcast Spotlight. Martin Kristelijn: Thank you. Glad to be here.
Allen Hall: Martin, there's a big problem out in the field that we
have a lot of bolts to tension and not a lot of people to go do it.
Plus I think as you and I had discussed previously, the bolt sizers
are getting much bigger. Everything is becoming heavier and just
being very difficult to do into machines changes all that. But
let's talk about the problem first. What are you seeing on factory
lines and out in service as people try to tension bolts. Martin
Kristelijn: Past couple of months, year, I would say we spoke to a
lot of people visited wind turbines, went in the field, see our
technicians tighten the bolts also to the factories, so Elle
production you name it. And well, the, we kept on keeping getting
the same feedback over and over. That they would like to speed up
the bolting process and also that they would like to increase the
quality, so to prevent any loose bolts or forgotten bolts. That was
really the starting point for us. We started to focus on bolt
tensioning, to automate it, to speed it up, and to increase the
quality. Allen Hall: So tensioning is the way going forward. A lot
of of us remember torquing as being the preferred method to tighten
bolts, but tensioning is now the way you wanna describe why that
is? Martin Kristelijn: Yeah, still it depends on who you ask, but
the main objective for everyone usually is to get a maintenance
free building connection, right? That you keep the maintenance cost
as low as possible. So that's also our goal. And bolt tensioning
for us is the most yeah. Convenient way forward to reach that.
Allen Hall: It's the most consistent way too, right? Is that with
torquing, we really don't know what the preload is on the bolt.
That's why engineers are preferring tension tools instead of
torquing tools now. Martin Kristelijn: Exactly. So with torquing
you have a friction coefficient you need to take into account.
That's an unpredictable. Value parameter. So you would like to get
rid of that. And you do that by just grabbing the bolt itself,
apply hydraulic pressure and stretch the bolt directly. And then
you have your hydraulic pressure times the surface of your tension
to, and that gives you exactly the the preload in your bolt and you
tighten the nut, release the pressure, and your bolt is perfectly
pretense. As simple as that, Allen Hall: right? So that process
takes time to do. And if you have a factory worker or a technician
doing tensioning to a lot of bolts of which there are thousands on
a wind turbine but there's probably what, a couple hundred that are
critical. Martin Kristelijn: Yeah. So around, give or take, 600
bolts critical bolted connections in a wind turbine. And imagine
that I said tightening the nut by hand. You have a wrench wrenching
each of those 600 bolts. Then you have your pull bar. You need to
thread that onto your bolt as well, or bolt stop bolt. Yeah, I can
tell you that you don't want to do that all day by hand. Allen
Hall: So how does that work right now in, in the factories? If
they're doing it by hand? Is it are they changing people at that
station because it just has to wear you out? Those bolts are big
and that technique of tensioning manually is tiresome, right?
Martin Kristelijn: Yeah, exactly. We visited some factories as well
and also the installation sites. And the feedback we got is that
people they hurt their arm. And not after the 10 bolt, not after
the a hundred bolt maybe. But after a thousand volts your arm
really starts to hurt. And yeah. That's not good for your
workforce, right? People need to be happy they need to be coming to
work with a smile and we try to, to accomplish that by automating
this this job. Allen Hall: Joel, if I had a tension a thousand
bolts a day on Monday, I don't, not sure. I would be going back on
Tuesday, would you? Joel Saxum: No. And I think of that on Saturday
and Sunday. I'm definitely trying to get as much rest as possible.
But if you, but you make this a little bit more, think about the
complication here is because as the global fleet. Grows. Okay. The
conversation we just had was about in the factory in a controlled
setting. That's one thing, right? Like you can have these into
machines like it, it's a good size tool. There's a lot of weight
there. There's, you have the classical tensioning tools, like
that's. It's all hydraulic, like there's a lot of things, but it's
controlled because you're in a factory, at least you have decent
conditions to work in. Even now, see the fleet grow and see what
the, the projections are for how many wind turbines are gonna be
installed over the next 2, 5, 10, 20 years globally. This is a
problem that you guys are solving for people in the field in a big
way, and that's the important part for me, when I talk to
technicians and I talk to people in the field. You're lugging this
equipment, it's the classical equipment. You're lugging it up there
and you're doing this and it's strain and drain on the body. And
then we know that's when the body gets worn down, then the mind
gets worn down and that's when HSE in incidents happen and we're
trying to reduce all of those things. That's what you guys are
working on. When someone goes into the field with this kit what are
you guys seeing for the change in the operators or the change in
the technicians? Are they, do they have a big smile on their face
when they see something like this? Martin Kristelijn: Yeah. They,
at least when we see them with our stuff in their hands, then they
smile a lot. Yes. But no the bottom line is that the, this tool
says, so for 42 attention tool, you are looking at 1520 kilograms.
With some electric motors on it, and that goes up to 50 kilograms
or 60 for M 72 tensioner. Allen Hall: That's a hundred pounds Joel
in America. That's a very heavy tool. Martin Kristelijn: Yeah. So
you need to carry that along, let's say 150 bolts in a flinch, and
that's one flange. Exactly. Yeah. Joel Saxum: Yeah. And so like
you, you go to an onshore turbine, say even your flange bolts, you
have bolts on the foundation, then you have. A lot of times, four
to five tower sections, those all have to be bolted together.
Martin Kristelijn: Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. Joel Saxum:
Yeah. And now, and then you talk up in the nelle and you're, you
have the blade bolts that have to get attention and all kinds of
things. So like you said, 600 different connections that need to be
worked on. So that was Martin Kristelijn: Let's say our starting
point heavy tooling. And we thought, okay, how can we make these
tools weightless for the operators and move them fast from one ball
to the other? Because that's also a thing you need to move it fast
from one bolt to the other to complete your 150 bolts in time
because in the end before dark, you want to go home, you need to
finish the bolt bolts. So what we did there is we designed a very
specific lift trolley. It's very low and compact, very lightweight
as well. So you should have let's say less problems with passing
obstacles. For example, you have the stairs in the wind turbine and
due to our low trolley design, it usually should go underneath the
stairs. So you're not bothered by that. And it makes attention to
weightless. If you combine. That literally with the automated
tensioning tool we made. Yeah. Then you have an unbeatable system.
Allen Hall: Yeah. So that's what in two machines has done, and your
team over there are mechanical geniuses. You actually make the
tension tool quasi weightless by using mechanical means. So you've
designed. Very smart systems tools in which the tension tool adapts
into to make it so much easier to do. And we're gonna put some of
these tensioning tool improvement devices, I'll call them on the
YouTube version so people can see them. But the simplest version of
this is the trolley. And maybe Martin, you can describe what this
thing is because. It's a little hard to see. We'll put it on
YouTube, obviously. But for those listening, what does the trolley
do in terms of the tensioning unit? Martin Kristelijn: First of all
it needs to operate in a very r rugged environment as a wind
turbine. So it needs to be super, super simple. It needs to be
super robust and easy to maintain. We took, design. It's made of
steel, galvanized steel, so you can hit it with a hammer and it
should still work. Then we made some nice interface brackets that
you can just hang your attention to in the trolley. Okay,