Putting experience into practice

Flanges are what connect instruments to the process. Damage to the flange contact surface can weaken the seal. Even minor impairments can mean a flange replacement, which involves removing the electronics, separating the flange, grinding down the welding seam and recalibrating the instrument. All that might take a good six hours. If a special flange needs ordering, then it can take days. Unless you have someone like Raoul Merklen on your team. A mechanic at Endress+Hauser Flow, he can repair a flange in 15 minutes. His secret? Rather than separate the connection from the instrument, he basically performs ‘open heart surgery’. He simply machines away small indentations with a fine grinding tool (or welds over them in cases of heavier damage). Although this destroys the surface cross hatching, rendering the flange temporarily unusable, Raoul Merklen developed a tool that allows him to accurately retrace the fine grooves on the contact surface back to the radius. Thanks to this special tool, which resembles a compass, the flange ends up looking like new. “In Cernay, I was able to rescue six titanium instruments costing 25,000 euros each using this method,” says the technician, who hails from the Alsace region of France. “Without the repair work, the customer would have had to wait eight months.”