Sunday, September 16, 2007

Borescopes help to Inspect Turbine Engines

Airlines are flying again and passenger levels are approaching records highs. All that flying means that there is more maintenance work. One area that is seeing a lot of growth is the engine side of the business, not just the big jobs like overhauls but smaller tasks like inspections and module changes.
At the front of this growing wave of work is a small Miami, Florida-based turbine repair shop called Complete Turbine Service.
CTS specializes in the kinds of jobs that large shops shy away from but that some airlines with limited in-house maintenance staffs find logistically difficult to arrange. Jobs like borescope inspections, hot-section inspections, engine runups, and module changes.
The owners of the engines, in many cases leasing companies, prefer doing business with an FAA repair station, according to Walter. There are plenty of consultants available to check records, he added, but when it comes to fixing something that they find wrong, then the owner of that engine is going to ask for quick service. And a company like CTS is able to provide that service.
"We saw in the engine shop," he explained, "that when you bring in work to the engine shop, it slows up work that makes you the most profits. We set up another shop and did hot-sections, gear boxes, fans, and field support."
CTS now employs 15 to 18 people, depending on the workload. Some are full-time and some work for aviation employment contractors. The amount of work varies, depending on many factors, but in an average month, CTS techs perform 15 to 20 borescope inspections plus module swaps, engine prebuy inspections, and teardowns for parts reuse.
To read more about borescopes using for turbine inspection got to this page 

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