Re: pig reconditioning

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Terry Fritz" <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>

Hi Greg,

Usually they clean up, repaint, reseal, and retest pigs that are
reconditioned.  Mostly just body work.  Pigs that fail usually do so very
dramatically and there is not much left.

I would think checking the thing with an ohm meter to be sure the windings
are there and equal and maybe peeking inside it to see if the oil looks
clean would be all that is needed to be quite sure it is in good condition.
 Pigs that look ok are almost always replaced due to other reasons besides
failure.  When they are removed, they are almost always cleaned up and
rechecked but that is mostly just to keep them looking good.  Pigs that
look good as your picture shows are good 99.9% of the time.  Only very high
power impulse testing would be likely to find an electrical problem.
Replacing gaskets, oil, insulators, and paint is the stuff that keeps the
reconditioning places busy.  They just discard the really bad pigs.  You
will note there is not a big pile of bad ones around ;-))

You may be a bit concerned about water getting inside them if the seals
look bad but the one in the picture looks perfectly fine to me.

Cheers,

	Terry


At 03:02 PM 10/5/2001 +1000, you wrote:
>Hello all,
>
>Below is an email from the "pole pig company" for those of you who 
>wanted to know what "reconditioning" involves. The advantage of one of 
>these reconditioned units is they can be returned if they fail. The "as 
>is" ones can not.
>
>I will place a photo of the pig I am looking at at 
>www.geocities-dot-com/gregjpeters. Give me some time to put it there.
>
>Here is the email:
>
>Hi Greg,
>
>Reconditioning a small unit like this does only consist of replacing all
>gaskets - and bushings if they happen to be chipped or damaged, 
>filtering oil, checking core & windings to be sure unit is serviceable 
>and all leads are connected, plus return to service tests and 
>repainting. Without this we offer no warranty and accept no returns, so 
>you are taking a small risk this way - a megger test does not alway 
>show all faults in the transformer as I'm sure you are aware.
>Units are certified PCB free to the limits of detection (limit of 
>detection is 2ppm).
>
>Regards,
>
>Leanne Fonteneau
>
>
>
>Cheers,
>
>
>Greg Peters
>Department of Earth Sciences,
>University of Queensland
>
>Phone: 0402 841 677
>
>