Weather Guard Lightning Tech
Standardizing Rain Erosion Testing Results with Wind Power LAB’s Rocky Software
Rocky, a cloud-based software developed by Wind Power LAB is helping to standardize the analysis of rain erosion test data for wind turbine coatings. By precisely annotating damage progression in test photos, Rocky eliminates human variability in interpreting results and generating accurate velocity vs. impact (V-N) curves. This innovative tool promises to improve coating durability predictions, reduce operational costs, and accelerate rain erosion solutions for the wind industry. Visit https://windpowerlab.com/ for more info!
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Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m Allen Hall, and I’m in San Diego, warm San Diego with at ACP OM&S and I’m here with Anders Røpke, who is this founding partner and CEO of Wind Power LAB based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Welcome to the show.
Anders Røpke: Thank for the invitation.
Allen Hall: So we’re gonna have a really technical discussion, but a really timely discussion. Yeah, about rain erosion and rain erosion testing. I was just over in Denmark, went to DTU, saw the Leading Edge Erosion Conference. Fascinated, great speakers, a lot of great data. One of the main discussion points was when you run a rain erosion test on a particular coating for a wind turbine, there’s a lot of variability.
And the holy grail is to get what they call a V N curve for a coating. That’s the velocity versus the number of impacts. You should be able to draw roughly a straight line. Okay. When I was over at Copenhagen, and watching all this go on, there’s a lot of slides up about V in curves where the V in curve was up and down.
The tilt of it was all over the place. When they had done testing at different rain erosion facilities, or had tested in the same erosion facility on the same kind of sample. Getting what they thought was a different result. Now, that seems to be driven by in part, the human element. Exactly. Everything about that test is pretty well controlled and the people at R&D test systems, which designed those rain erosion rigs have made a really nice machine.
Let’s just be honest. It’s a really good machine. But as when PowerLab is determining, the issue is looking at the photos of the damage and then saying, Oh, here’s where damage starts. And this is how it propagates. That’s a human element problem that’s added to this very technical decision making. We’re making errors there.
And that’s where Wind Power LAB comes in. And at Wind Power LAB, you guys are blade experts, right?
Anders Røpke: We are blade experts. So we are actually coming from the field observation side, if you like. So we see the products when they fail. Sorry to bring the bad news, but we see leading edge erosion out there still, even though we have big LEP campaigns.
Yeah. And one thing is the application, it’s a hard environment to turn out offshore, for instance. But we also see coatings fail earlier than anticipated. And the long term effect is a lot of unnecessary cost for these wind farm owners. Because then they’re looking into yet one more LEP campaign.
Through the end of, before the end of life of this wind farm. That’s extremely expensive. Onshore, but it’s maybe 20 times more expensive offshore. It is. So if we should fix this. We should. We should. Then why don’t we try to test our products a little bit better?
And that’s where the Leading Edge Erosion Symposium you visited.
It’s really good. We get some focus on this. Oh, yeah. Because you look at the, at all the erosion test thing that is going on with our partners R&D.
Allen Hall: Yes.
Anders Røpke: You have the most sophisticated machine. You can control the droplet size, the speed and whatnot. It’s magnificent. And then it is the tons of data coming out of the system will have to be processed by some highly skilled experts, right?
Test engineers. And here the trouble starts, right? Because if we are the test engineers, you are getting your 200, 000 pictures in from the test, right? It’s fairly expensive to run the test. I look at the same data. I will almost, I’m almost certain that I can promise you that we will not get the same results.
So that means if you produce one VN curve, I’ll produce another one. Somebody Third parties should select which one is the right one. And that is what we base our product on.
Allen Hall: It is. It’s, there’s literally millions of dollars going in per year on rain erosion coatings based upon the data and the published data on the VN curves.
Anders Røpke: So when you invest in a leading edge shell, protection shell like this is something we bought from our friends at Polytech, then it’s a matter of the durability. So when will this start eroding? That’s what you basically test in a erosion test. The VN curve tells you something about when that time is, right?
Yes. And if we are incorrect, because we have some accuracy issues in our assessment between the two of us, then the durability of this product may not be better. Oh, it could be better. It could be worse. It could be worse. We don’t know. That’s the whole point.
Allen Hall: Yeah.
Anders Røpke: So with the software here. Then we assisting our leading edge protection developers or manufacturers in handling all the many thousand hours of tests coming through and tons of data.
It’s organized. You can share your your test between inside your test department, right? And then you can go first and do your test down to my test. We can do an overlay. And from that, you can actually see that we agree, right? Because we have. A more accurate view on when we start to see the erosion for the first time.
In here, you mark up with small polygons around the various items from the test results. Yes. And you should have the same picture as, or the same results as I should.
Allen Hall: Wind Power LAB has developed this piece of software. Yeah. It’s based in the cloud. It’s called Rocky, like Rocky Balboa. And what it does is it takes all those photographs from the rain erosion test.
So as the rain erosion test proceeds, it runs for a little while, then it stops and they take a high resolution photo. They started back up again. They continue the count, right? So there you have a series of photos showing increasing levels of damage over time. But the issue is How do you track that VN curve from those images?
That’s where the human element has to come in and a lot of times if they’re not using a Rocky type system They’re actually using like Excel or PowerPoint to sort through all these photos and go Oh, it was at minute 52 that this issue started that is highly interpretive.
Anders Røpke: And today we see that happening, right?
We see clients with spreadsheets and PowerPoints. And they’re really doing their best. The problem is I cannot reproduce your test result, right?
Allen Hall: Which is the ultimate point of a test. It should be reproducible. Otherwise, something is wrong with the test setup.
Anders Røpke: So we have tried to standardize. The way you should annotate in here, yes.
Not annotate, but mark up with polygons track when certain track and when something happens, you can play back and forth inside your time series to get even more accurate, the assessment results. Yeah. And by doing that we will actually be able to, the two of us will be able to come up with the same test result.
Allen Hall: So the results out of the Rocky system have been, from what I’ve seen, remarkable. Because I didn’t think the human element had played that much into the, to the results. It is, you get wide differences in basically the same test data. So if we had the same data set in front of two engineers going through it, they would pick different VN curves out of that same set of data.
That’s a problem for the industry. It is.
Anders Røpke: And then, And it’s very costly as well.
Allen Hall: It’s super costly.
Anders Røpke: Or it could be even better to ability, right?
Allen Hall: So it could go both ways. Sure. Because you ever, what the, what happens with those VN curves is that if I’m an operator, I have a rough idea of the number of water impacts of, at my site, because I track that.
It’s one of the things I track. So then I know okay, I’m going to have X many raindrops hit this material over time, therefore I have a lifetime of X. And. If that VN curve is wrong, I could be overpaying for a material. I could be having material that just fails too early again, overpaying for this thing.
So it’s a cost issue for the operator at the end of the day. And then the operators are struggling because from what I could tell, and I’m not an operator, but if I were an operator, it’d be really confused right now on rain erosion products, because we’re at ACP OMS and I run into four or five different providers of coatings.
Here, and they all saying the same thing to me, but when I talk to the operators, they say, no, like this one works in our site and that one didn’t. Yeah.
And it’s a consistency on the engineering side.
Anders Røpke: It is, but it’s not only on, the test side, but it’s definitely also on the application side out.
Sure. Oh, sure. Sure. So I’m not saying that we have a poor products on the market. I’m just saying that we need to step it up on the testing side so we sure get the correct VN curves.
Allen Hall: We need to test the variability. Exactly. But the problem is if we interpret the photos incorrectly, we don’t have any data.
We can’t make any heads or tails of that. We don’t have, we can’t sort draw on the line. Exactly. That is a huge problem. Yeah, and I think that’s where, based upon the , the number of doctorate students, ed, who really educated people that are working the rain erosion issue. Andres, you’re right. The application is really key, but also just being able to interpret the data.
It’s just a huge learning and there really isn’t any tools to them.
Anders Røpke: And then being able to share those results and reproduce those results. So we have a proper workflow that I’ll quality check your work, your analysis, and I can reproduce it. Then we are aligned and following a standardized way. That’s the dream.
It is. This is a, ladies and gentlemen, this is Lean and Six Sigma. It’s not something new. Any other industry would test their products like this.
Allen Hall: So you should be able to take the same coding to two different, essentially R&D test systems, Rainrose facilities, they’re all in Europe, and get the same results out of both sites.
Yes. That is the goal. You can’t do that today. No.
Anders Røpke: At least then it’s based on luck. Yeah. That you hit the same number inside your spreadsheets, for instance. Or whatever system you’ve developed. And then then of course we can do this for all kinds of rain erosion test facilities. And we can do this not just only for what is applied in the wind industry.
I pray for that we get some more proper testing inside the aerospace.
Allen Hall: Aerospace needs it horribly bad.
Anders Røpke: Yes, they do. That’s sad news in my ears. Yeah, that’s true.
Allen Hall: Because it’s a difficult problem. They have, the aerospace has the same problem that wind turbine engineers have. is what do you do with all this data?
How do I interpret it? Every engineer interprets it different. If you, it’s hard to be independent, especially if it’s your coding, and you’re the designer of the coding, and you’re going through the photos, you want to lean towards, ah, this is working better. It’s hard. You got to take that human element out of it to really get down to the raw data, and that, that has been the hurdle.
Rocky, though, gets rid of that, right? Rocky, takes that data, even old data. So the data you have been sitting on for two or three years in the past, you can actually put it through the Rocky system and say, okay, the real VN curve is this. So not even on, you don’t have to repeat the test.
Anders Røpke: No, where you can reuse your data if you like.
And optimize your quality in hindsight and then know where you are. Maybe you are in a really strong position. You can have the great material. Just, I know it. Let’s hope for it for us. And, but going forward. Then your entire test engineering team will have the same tool available.
If somebody leaves the company, it’s still in here. It’s still there. Yeah. And as we know from the Rocky movies, it does Rocky one, two, three, and so forth. So this is Rocky one, and now we’re generating a lot of data. And of course we are also AI side of things because all this annotation will eventually be automated.
So our test engineers can focus that time on, optimizing. And making it even more accurate in here, so you get even more accurate VN curves, right? Nobody enjoys watching these tons of images just day in and day out. No. Let’s try to, in Rocky 2, get that one fixed.
Allen Hall: Just get it yeah, as you accumulate more data in the system, that is obviously going to occur, so it’s going to get smarter as you go along.
But in terms of going back and using old data, so I can put my existing data, upload it to the cloud. process it with the Rocky system, get a better data right there. So now obviously codings have evolved. I can start comparing codings. I have, I probably have a lot of data that I can upload to Rocky, a lot of photos.
I can go track each one of them. I can start getting now real VN curves out of it. And now I have a better understanding. And as a manufacturer of a coding, now I can really help my customers say, if you have a, Site where there’s a lot of rain. You want to use this coding because they’ll usually offer more than one coding, or if I have maybe a sandy territory, I want to go to use this coding, but I think from the operator side, also, the operators are starting to go back and do some of the testing on their own and say, okay, I have this curve, I’m not really sure I want to verify, I want to verify this, but they have the same problem.
They need to have a system to go through that data logically. So they can get a true set.
Anders Røpke: Exactly. So if if you can share maybe then as an operator, you would pay for your own tests, right? Maybe you should do that. If you have a probably should have fit 10, 000 turbines and quite a huge investment in doing this, right?
Sure. So making sure that the durability is anticipated. So you can start planning for those LEP campaigns and not get surprised that you need to add one more in.
Allen Hall: Yeah. I do think the R&D test systems, rain erosion test rigs are. As good as they’re ever going to get. The technology, the one I saw at DTU is amazing.
So the technology on the test side is there. But, yeah, we just haven’t figured out the human element and eliminated it. It’s good that Wind Power LAB has stepped into that void. Because you’re Blaine experts. And you understand what’s happening out there. And you can correlate it. So now that you’re creating this data set, you guys will have a data set of these different codings, in a sense.
And plush. You have a lot of people out in the field reporting back this blade has this issue, that blade has this issue, this coating has this issue. It should start to correlate back to the data set, right? The VN curves should start to match. And feed into the innovation process of the next generation of products.
We’re moving too slow on rain erosion.
Anders Røpke: And then last but not least, this project here, or the software, this project here, Something we have commercialized now and it’s available for anyone in the industry that would like to, use it. It is something that started in a grain funded project back home in Denmark between the Technical University of Denmark and R&D Systems.
Okay. So it’s actually a good use of innovation funding. Sure. Came all the way out to the marketplace as a tool you can buy and have on subscription.
Allen Hall: It’s actionable information, which is needed today across the world. There’s two problems in the world and wind turbines, mostly.
Lightning and rain erosion. Okay. And sometimes rain erosion is more than lightning, but those are the two. Yeah. Danny Ellis from Sky Specs told me years ago, every wind turbine has rain erosion problems, every one of them. And I think that is going away, but until we have better data and people start using the Rocky system to evaluate their photos and their damage, we’re just not going to solve this problem.
It’s just going to continue on.
Anders Røpke: And eventually this could be what will save maybe one or two leading edge protection campaigns. In an offshore scenario, we have clients in Netherlands, for instance, where they save like millions in vessel costs.
Allen Hall: Oh, easy.
Anders Røpke: Because they could, get rid of some part of the scope because they were actually able to pinpoint which of the turbines that were in need of a LEP coating.
Yeah. That case could have been even better if the durability on these products applied were actually as anticipated and planned.
Allen Hall: Yeah. So the engineering results in the LAB have to match what happens in the field.
Anders Røpke: Exactly.
Allen Hall: It has to happen that way. So how do people get in contact with Wind Power LAB to evaluate Rocky and take a look at it, maybe throw some images up on the Rocky cloud?
Anders Røpke: Yeah, so you can look me up at LinkedIn, of course, and connect. I’m happy to connect with anyone that invites me. Or go to wind power app.com. Yeah. And you will find a contact phone. We’ll be in touch , and you can see our phone number. Come and visit us in Denmark or invite us for a meeting. We are happy to.
Allen Hall: How fast could they implement that system? They give you the phone calls, the auditors, Hey, I’m ready for this. Give the demo how soon before you can hook ’em up and run through it.
Anders Røpke: Basically, we need to create a use account. That’s it. That’s it.
Allen Hall: Wow.
Anders Røpke: Of course, they need to have a, the RainyMotion data.
Allen Hall: They have the photos. Yeah. Okay. But as fast as they can upload them, it’s as fast as you can process.
Anders Røpke: And of course, then a proper introduction to the tool.
Allen Hall: Sure. Sure. A little bit of training. Yeah. But that’s it. It’s pretty user, you guys make great software. So it’s pretty much user intuitive things.
Yeah. So no problem with that.
Anders Røpke: And yeah, then we could discuss, another topic would be that the test results. We could open up and do maybe joint innovation on products and that whole deal, but it’s not like we’re sharing your results with anyone else.
Allen Hall: No, but hey, if you’re working with WinPowerLab, there’s a lot of smart people working there and they understand that issue.
They can help with the codings. And plus we have seen real life. Yeah. Does it make sense? It gives good advice, which is what we need. We need some good advice. Ander, this is fantastic. This is a really, this is a really innovating piece of software and it’s going to be used and it already is being used at GTU and R&D test systems.
But anybody that has an R&D test system rig can use it. Anybody who has R&D test system data can use it today.
Anders Røpke: Yeah.
Allen Hall: Amazing.
Anders Røpke: So if you have a test system with R&D today, then reach out to R&D colleagues as well. Yes. Or contacts and then we can get in touch that way as well.
Allen Hall: Wow. That’s fantastic. Anders, thanks so much for being on the program.
This is fantastic.
Anders Røpke: Thank you very much.
Standardizing Rain Erosion Testing Results with Wind Power LAB’s Rocky Software
As shown here, there are (formerly credible) people who are telling us that Trump is restoring Americans’ trust in government.
Do they truly believe this?
One of the casualties of the post-truth era is that the statements of our “leaders” no longer are required to have any basis in fact. What Jim Jordan says here is a fine example.
When he says “better” here, is he referring to runaway inflation? Trump’s purposeless and illegal war with no end in sight? His blatant corruption and criminality? His having, quite successfully, divided the American people into groups that hate each other? The enrichment of billionaires at the expense of the working class? The carefully engineered collapse of the environment so as to favor his donors in fossil fuels? The demise of the U.S. educational system?
Please be clear.
Weather Guard Lightning Tech
CNC Onsite Cuts Repair Costs With Uptower Machining
Søren Kellenberger, CEO of CNC Onsite, joins to discuss uptower yaw gear repairs, flat tower flanges, and replacing 1,000 blade root bushings across 26 turbines.
Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter 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 YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
Allen Hall 2025: Soren, welcome back to the podcast.
Søren Kellenberger: Thank you, Allen, and, uh, nice doing it, uh, face-to-face- Yes, it’s great … and not as a team, uh, call. Right. That’s
Allen Hall 2025: true. Yeah. You’ve been doing a good bit of traveling, and you’re the new head of CNC Onsite.
Søren Kellenberger: I am, yes.
Allen Hall 2025: So congratulations on that.
Søren Kellenberger: Thank you very much.
Allen Hall 2025: And all the exciting new things that CNC Onsite [00:01:00] is doing, plus all the things you have developed and are now out in the field implementing, the, the list goes on and on and on.
I’m alwa- every time I talk to you, “Oh, we got a new-” Yeah … “machine to do something uptower.” So it’s all uptower, which is the, the beauty of CNC Onsite. You’re thinking about the operator and the cost to pull the blades off and do lifting the cell off and all those things. If we can do it uptower, we can save 30, 40, 50% of the cost of a repair.
Søren Kellenberger: Yeah.
Allen Hall 2025: That’s where CNC Onsite is just really killing it. You guys are doing great. Thank
Søren Kellenberger: you. Of course, we like what we do, but, uh, thank you.
Allen Hall 2025: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, it’s good, it’s good. And, and so w- let’s talk about the things that I know about, and we’ll start there, and then we’ll go to all the new things you’re doing.
So the one that I see a lot of operators asking about is yaw tooth. Yeah.
Søren Kellenberger: Uh,
Allen Hall 2025: deformations, broken teeth on the yaw gear. That’s a big problem. And when I talk to [00:02:00] technicians, and I have them texting me about this, like, “Oh, well, I just weld on the gear back on, weld the tooth back on.” That’s a short-term solution.
That’s not gonna be long-term. The long-term solution is the CNC Onsite. Can you explain what you do to permanently fix these yaw gear problems?
Søren Kellenberger: Yeah. So what we do is actually we start by getting information about the, uh, original yaw ring, so the dimension of the teeth, and we get some load data. And, uh, then we start designing a replacement segment.
Uh, so what we ac- the process is actually that we bring a CNC controlled machine uptower, mount it on the yaw ring, and then we mill away that worn area, uh, creating a small pocket. And then those, uh, segments that we have designed, they are prefabricated. We bring them up and mount them in, in that, uh, pocket and bring the- The yaw ring back to where it’s, you can say, original design, uh, [00:03:00] that way.
Yeah
Allen Hall 2025: It’s better than the original design, ’cause you’re actually putting in better teeth than the, the manufacturer did originally.
Søren Kellenberger: True. Yeah, yeah.
Allen Hall 2025: So that happens, so you’re, you’re machining out those old teeth, broken teeth, putting the new set of teeth in th- and that all bolts in, and that’s it. That’s it.
But the, the difficulty is getting the machinery uptower to do that. That’s where a lot of your, your technology comes from, is getting this very accurate, uh, well-defined machine uptower and doing very controlled grinding and milling. Yes. So can you explain what that system looks like? If I’m gonna grind off those yaw, broken yaw teeth, how big is that kit?
Søren Kellenberger: It… Obviously, it depends a little bit on the turbine size. Sure, okay. Yeah. So, uh, it, so the, the newer five, six, uh, 10 megawatt turbines have larger teeth, so yeah, there you need a, a larger machine.
Allen Hall 2025: Okay.
Søren Kellenberger: But let’s say for, uh, Vestas three megawatt, the, the [00:04:00] complete machine weighs about 250 kilos. That’s it? So yeah.
So it, it comes up in smaller components. We just use, uh, the, the internal crane in, in the nacelle, and, uh, then we can lift the components to the yaw ring, assemble the machine, and then we are basically good to go. So it take, takes less than a day to get everything up and, uh, get set and be ready to, to machine.
Allen Hall 2025: So if you wanna fix a yaw gear problem, how long does it take from start to finish to get that done?
Søren Kellenberger: It typically, it takes one day to get everything up and get ready, and then per six teeth, which is a typical segment, it takes about a day to machine that. Okay. So, uh, let’s say you have, uh, somewhere between 10 and 15 teeth, it’s, uh, two to three segments.
So we do that in a week. Um-
Allen Hall 2025: Wow … and- ‘Cause the alternative is call a crane, have them lifting the cell off.
Søren Kellenberger: Yeah.
Allen Hall 2025: Take the yaw gear off, put a yaw gear on, if you can find a yaw gear. Yes. Put the nacelle back on. [00:05:00] Well, and I guess obviously the rotors are coming down too, so- Yeah. You’re talking about- Yes
hundreds of thousands of dollars in downtime. Yeah. It’s a big ordeal. The CNC Onsite method is so much easier.
Søren Kellenberger: We will just put our equipment in the back of our truck- … and then, uh, we’ll, we are ready to mobilize in a few days. So yeah, we can significantly, uh, bring down the downtime and, and as you said, the crane cost is of course extremely high.
And then you can add all the project management. You know, con- do I actually have my access roads, uh, still available? Right. Is the crane pad intact? And all of that stuff you need to organize. You can just forget about that and, uh- And
Allen Hall 2025: get it done …
Søren Kellenberger: get it done. Yeah.
Allen Hall 2025: Yeah. There’s, there’s a lot of owners, we, everybody knows who the machines are that have the, the, the yaw tooth problem.
Søren Kellenberger: Yeah.
Allen Hall 2025: So if you’re one of those owner operators, you better get ahold of CNC Onsite. Now, flanges on tower sections. It’s become a, a really critical issue. You hear a lot of, of [00:06:00] operators, OEMs talking about, “I’m putting together these tower sections and those flanges don’t really meet up quite right.”
Søren Kellenberger: Yep.
Allen Hall 2025: “I’m creating uneven torque patterns, bolt pat- my bolt tightening is not quite right.”
Søren Kellenberger: Yeah.
Allen Hall 2025: And it never really seats right, so you have this mechanical, built-in mechanical problem. CNC Onsite is now fixing that so those flanges are actually really flat. Really flat, yes. ‘Cause that’s what you need.
Søren Kellenberger: Yeah.
Allen Hall 2025: Yeah. They’re highly loaded.
Søren Kellenberger: If, if you want, uh… If you want your joints to be, uh, basically maintenance free, uh, we can, uh, achieve that with machining the flanges. And then, of course, you need to be in control with your bolt tightening process. Sure. But if you do those two things, you can have maintenance free bolted connections, and there’s so much money to be saved in the operations.
Um, and of course, when you have these bolts that end up fatiguing, some of them don’t get caught in time and you end up ha- having a catastrophic failure on the turbine. Uh- We’ve [00:07:00] seen that … because you have that zipper effect. Once a bolt starts breaking, the neighboring ones take that extra load and it accelerates really quickly.
Uh, yeah. Sure does.
Allen Hall 2025: Yeah. It’s a very serious situation, but it starts with this very simple solution which is just make the flange flat.
Søren Kellenberger: Yeah. But I think it’s some… a part of the issue is that those buying the towers aren’t necessarily responsible for the operational cost of maintaining that bolted connection.
So they might save a little bit of money when they buy the tower sections with rougher tolerances, but you will spend the money 10 times in the operations. Uh, and, and that’s, I think that’s where some of the operations, uh, re- the, the, those responsible for operational costs should, uh, get a little bit more CapEx spend, uh- Oh, sure.
Yeah. And, and then, uh, actually save a lot of money and, and reduce risk. Uh, it’s a huge, huge risk
Allen Hall 2025: It’s, it’s one of those lessons learned. You [00:08:00] don’t know that they should be flat. You shouldn’t know… You don’t know your flanges should be flat until you experience the problems, and then you want all your flanges flat from here on out.
Søren Kellenberger: Yeah.
Allen Hall 2025: But there’s only one way to do that really, and that’s to call CNC Onsite to come in and to make them flat.
Søren Kellenberger: Yeah.
Allen Hall 2025: Because it’s a difficult thing to do. You really need to have the machining prowess and the tight tolerances that CNC Onsite’s gonna deliver in a tool that can actually be adapted to that tower ring and make those surfaces flat.
It’s complicated. Exactly.
Søren Kellenberger: It is. Uh, but that is what we do every day, so, uh- Yes, I’ve noticed … yeah, so
Allen Hall 2025: so- You take on those challenges
Søren Kellenberger: So we are optimizing our machines to be not only fit for one-offs, but actually to go into a manufacturing, uh, process. So we have op- optimized our machines a lot with, uh, automatic alignment and, uh, stuff like that to, to really make that process, uh, easier.
Because it has been considered that when you had to machine a flange, you weren’t in [00:09:00] control with your production, uh, processes. But I think that is, um, a bit of a misinterpretation. It’s, it’s a little bit like saying when I have a casted component, I cannot get a bearing fit, uh, in my cast process. That’s not because your cast process is wrong, there’s just some limitations to what you can do.
Sure. And it’s basically the same here. Yes. And, and if you apply that con- uh, planned machining, you can gain some real benefits, uh, later on and the cost will, of course, drop dra- dramatically if you plan it, rather than call for one, uh, every time you have one that is out of tolerances and, and you can even narrow those tolerances down and get the benefits from maintenance-free bowler connections.
Allen Hall 2025: Right.
Søren Kellenberger: Uh-
Allen Hall 2025: Right, ’cause you’re gonna pay for it for the next 20, 30 years. Yeah. Yeah. That’s absolutely right. Now, you’re getting involved in some of the safety aspects of operating a turbine. Uh, some of the pins and the lockouts on the low-speed gearboxes get a little worn over time, so the hole [00:10:00] you put the pin in gets worn.
There’s a lot of loads on that and- Yeah … it starts to oblong out and eventually, if you’re trying to work on that gearbox, you’re trying to keep that and your technicians safe, which is what you’re doing- Yeah … that lockout pin doesn’t quite fit in the hole and it creates a little bit of a safety risk.
Yeah. So now CNC on-site’s coming in and saying, “Hey, wait a minute. We can realign that, clean that hole up, make that safe again.”
Søren Kellenberger: Yes.
Allen Hall 2025: Explain what that looks like and what that process is to do that.
Søren Kellenberger: Yeah. So again, it’s the same thought like with the, with the O-ring, uh, that instead of bringing a component down and trying to fix it, we have designed some machinery we can bring uptower and then make that repair.
So basically what we do is that, that we mill that hole a little bit larger and then we bring a bushing, uh, that we, uh, freeze into that hole- Okay … and to recreate that tight fit again with a, with a locking pin. Uh, so it’s, it’s not that [00:11:00] complicated, but you still need to know, of course, what you are doing.
So finding the center of the original hole is one of the critical things because you want the center of the new ring to be in that same position- Sure … to make sure it fits with the pin
Allen Hall 2025: right. So- Right. You can’t just take a drill up there and try to clean out that hole. No, no. That is not the way to do that
That,
Søren Kellenberger: that
Allen Hall 2025: won’t work. No, no . I’m sure it’s been tried, but- Yeah … no, you wanna have accurate mach- actual, uh, tight tolerance machinery up there to, to align that hole, drill it properly, put that insert back into that spot- Yeah … which is gonna be a hardened insert so it’ll last longer, right?
Søren Kellenberger: Yeah, yeah.
Allen Hall 2025: So once you do that, y- it’s a permanent fix to a otherwise nagging problem.
That’s wonderful.
Søren Kellenberger: Yeah.
Allen Hall 2025: So, th- again, that kit just goes right uptower, right up the, the lift, right up the cl- crane- Exactly … and bang, you’re done. Yeah. Okay.
Søren Kellenberger: So all our machines are designed to be able to be lifted with the internal crane-
Allen Hall 2025: Yeah …
Søren Kellenberger: of that specific nacelle.
Allen Hall 2025: Okay.
Søren Kellenberger: So obviously as the cells go bigger, they have more load cap- uh- Me too
load capacity. Yeah. So for the smaller [00:12:00] turbines, the machines come in, in a bit smaller parts- Okay … so that we are sure we stay within that 250 or 500 kilogram or even whatever the limit is of, of that- Yeah, yeah, yeah … crane. And then we can, uh, reassemble everything uptower and still do tolerances within a few hundredths of a millimeter.
And, and I think that is, that is really the core of, of what we do that, that we can achieve those workshop tolerances on site, um-
Allen Hall 2025: It’s crazy when I tell people that. I say, “Well, you know, CNC on-site, they can’t… I mean, those, those tolerances can’t be that tight.” And I say, “No, no, no, no. They’re talking about, you know, fractions of a millimeter,” which in, in American terms means fractions of a mil.
Yeah. That’s 1/1000th of an inch. That’s the tolerance you’re doing.
Søren Kellenberger: Yeah.
Allen Hall 2025: Uh, and that means quality at the end of the day. If you can machine things that tight, that means what you’re getting is gonna be right for that job. Yeah. It’s gonna fix that, fix that problem permanently, which is the goal. Yes. Don’t recreate the problem.
Just fix it once and be done. Now, blade root [00:13:00] inserts, huge issue. CNC on-site has been developing tooling to drill out those existing inserts and, and put in new inserts, and you’re having success with that.
Søren Kellenberger: Yeah.
Allen Hall 2025: That’s a… it seems like a complicated process, but you have owned that quite well. Talk about what that machinery looks like today, how you’re doing that process, and what have you learned from doing some, uh, field work.
Søren Kellenberger: It’s, uh… we actually, we’ve, we’ve developed two different machines now. Okay. So we, we have, we have one that is, uh, fully CNC controlled, uh, when you need to do a lot of bushings. Yeah. Um, that one takes a bit more, uh, time to set up, but, but, uh, each drilling process is, is really fast. Uh, and then we have developed a semi-automatic machine as well, uh, which is a little bit easier to mount, mounts directly on the blade.
And it’s, uh, really perfect when you only have smaller areas of the, the blade root where you don’t need to replace all bushings- But maybe typically it’s, it’s in the high load [00:14:00] area, which is 15 to 20 bushings maybe. Right. Something like that, right? Yes.
Allen Hall 2025: Yeah.
Søren Kellenberger: So, so there we can just mount it directly on the blade and, and then drill from, uh, from there.
Um, and it works really well. We completed, uh, the first large scale, uh, commercial, uh, project, uh, together with our good friends from, uh, We4C. Uh- Right.
Allen Hall 2025: Yes.
Søren Kellenberger: And, uh, and now we are producing, uh, two more drilling machines- Oh … uh, for, for new upcoming, uh, projects also together with, uh, the guys from, from We4C.
Allen Hall 2025: Wow.
Søren Kellenberger: So now it’s, it’s starting to, uh, to pick up. Um, it’s been a relatively long process, and I guess no one really wants to be the first mover on, uh, on new technology, right? Right. So we’ve had a lot of questions. Oh, that… And that looks interesting, but how many, uh, turbines, uh, or how many blades have you repaired?
And it’s been up until now, well, it’s only tested in the lab. Uh, but now we have the first, uh, large scale commercial, uh, project with, uh, 26, uh, turbines, [00:15:00] uh, repaired and, uh, and 1,000 bushings, uh, that were replaced, uh, across those, uh, 26 turbines. So-
Allen Hall 2025: Wow …
Søren Kellenberger: so I guess that is now large scale. Uh-
Allen Hall 2025: That’s large scale.
Yeah. Yeah. I would consider 1,000 a large scale test. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. And that brings all those turbines back to life.
Søren Kellenberger: Absolutely. They are up running, uh, full power again, so, uh, that is, uh-
Allen Hall 2025: That’s huge …
Søren Kellenberger: really nice.
Allen Hall 2025: For the operator, I’m sure they love that.
Søren Kellenberger: Yeah. And, and of course, uh, there’s, there’s been a lot of discussions about blades and, uh, bla- the, the waste, uh, issue you have on, on worn- Oh
out blades. Sure. So by being able to fix them instead of replacing them, not only is the, the cost for fixing a blade a lot lower than buying new ones, uh, but, but also from a, an environmental perspective. The not having to scrap them and create that waste is, uh, is also a nice, uh,
Allen Hall 2025: thing. Yeah, it’s one of the things that pops up more recently about replacing blades, and I think the [00:16:00] industry and the operators are pushing back on that.
Uh, because a lot of times the OEM wants to replace a blade, it’s just easier for them to do.
Søren Kellenberger: Yeah.
Allen Hall 2025: But the reality is, is that yeah, you’re creating this additional problem. What are you gonna do with the disposal of this blade? Do we really need to do that? Is it so far gone that I can’t recover it? I think a lot of times, especially with fiberglass blades- Yeah
you can bring them back to life.
Søren Kellenberger: Yeah.
Allen Hall 2025: Just with a little bit of engineering, uh, prowess and some good machinery- Yeah. You can, you can make magic happen, and that’s what CNC OnSite is doing. So that, that’s really amazing that, uh, you’re starting to get more adoption of that on, on the blade root inserts. I know across the United States there’s all kinds of issues, and you’re proving it out.
I think the adoption rate in America and all over is gonna really step up. Now, uh, you always have some cool new project, sort of top secret. What are you working on that the world needs to know about?
Søren Kellenberger: Yeah. W- I mean, we are constantly, uh, [00:17:00]expanding our, our line of services. Uh, so- Sure … so we are just out there trying to listen to what kind of issues do we see in, in the industry-
Allen Hall 2025: Yeah
Søren Kellenberger: and how can that be fixed, uh, uptower. So, so some of the, the latest, uh, innovations we’ve been doing is a, a new machine on, um… to, to do shaft milling. Uh, so that c- that can be on generator shafts, uh, for instance. There are some machines out there, but we’ve decided to go, uh, against CNC control- Okay
because it gives us a lot of, uh, opportunities both on, on speed, uh, of the process. It’s a more safe, uh, way to, uh, to do it.
Allen Hall 2025: Sure.
Søren Kellenberger: And we can actually also do different, uh, shapes on the shaft, so, so we can do more advanced, uh, repairs. Okay. We, we don’t need to stick to a certain diameter all the way. Now we can, we can mo- make grooves, and we can do, uh- Really?
all sort of sorts of stuff, uh- Oh … along that process because it’s CNC controlled.
Allen Hall 2025: Oh, sure. Okay. Um, and- Boy, okay. That makes a lot of sense. So you can actually take a, a, a basic, [00:18:00] basic, basic design of a shaft and make modifications to it- Yeah … to extend the lifetime and make it work better.
Søren Kellenberger: Yes. So typically we would mill down, uh, the shaft and- Sure
install a sleeve- Sure … to recreate a, a bearing fit, for instance.
Allen Hall 2025: Right. Yeah.
Søren Kellenberger: But we have possibilities to, uh, to create, um, grooves or anything that would do a stress relief or whatever you need, lubrication, or if you, if you want to do something, uh, afterwards, we, we can do that with, uh, with our machines.
Uh- Yeah. So yeah, we, we have some new machines for, for hollow shaft, uh, machining, so we can do stuff, uh, inside the main shaft, for instance. We can do stuff on the, the outside, as I mentioned on, on the generator shaft, but that could be on the gearbox as well. So- Sure … sometimes we see issues on the main shaft to, to gearbox, uh, connection.
Allen Hall 2025: Yeah.
Søren Kellenberger: We are able to, to fix, uh, those, uh, things uptower. Wow. And, uh, so yeah, lot of new, uh, stuff being, uh, developed.
Allen Hall 2025: That’s, that’s awesome.
Søren Kellenberger: [00:19:00] Yeah.
Allen Hall 2025: And I, I know you guys are busy, but- If somebody wants to get ahold of CNC Onsite and get work done this year, they better be making phone calls to you- … quickly. So I, I know your order book is filling up and you’re, you’re having to devote crews and machinery and time.
Yeah. How do people get ahold of you and get on that contact list and can start working the process?
Søren Kellenberger: I would say go into, uh, cnconsite.dk and, uh, there we have all our, our contacts. Uh, so just reach out. There’s a, yeah, formula you can, uh, fill in, uh, or you can find our direct contacts in our webpage, and, uh, then we can start looking at it.
So we are quite busy, but we are always- Yeah … open for, uh, discussions and, uh, yeah. That,
Allen Hall 2025: that’s a problem with being successful, is you’re just always busy running around trying to take care of problems, and that’s the thing, is that everybody I talk to that’s used CNC Onsite loves it-
Søren Kellenberger: Yeah …
Allen Hall 2025: and loves the process and loves the work you do.
So there’s gonna be a lot more phone calls and a lot more orders coming your way, and that’s- Yeah … that’s awesome. [00:20:00] Soren- Yeah … it’s so good to see you again and it’s so good to see you in person. Yeah. And congratulations on the promotion and everything that’s happening at CNC Onsite.
Søren Kellenberger: Thank you, Allen. It’s a pleasure.
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