Chapter XXVIII.—ERECTING.
ERECTING.—The term erecting is applied in large work to the operations involved in fitting the parts to their places on the engine or machine, as well as to placing them upon their foundations and putting them together ready to run.
In vice work or fitting, the various parts are put together ready to be erected, each part being complete in itself, but not adjusted with relation to the others. Thus, while a link motion may be complete in itself, the length of its eccentric rods will usually require correcting when placed upon the engine. Furthermore the position of the eccentric is to be adjusted.
The boiler fittings may be complete in themselves, but will still require to be fitted or erected upon or to their places.
Erecting requires the greatest of skill, care, and judgment, in order that the work may be put together properly aligned and any defects of construction corrected in the finished machine.
In erecting a machine, as in building a house—or, indeed, as in everything that man constructs—the work must be begun at the foundation.
In a machine in which the working parts are carried and contained upon framework, such framework becomes the foundation so far as the erector is concerned.
In a stationary steam engine the cylinder and bed plate form the erector’s foundation while the engine is in the shop, the mason’s foundation being an after consideration.
In a locomotive the boiler is the foundation to which all the other parts are either directly or indirectly affixed.
The erector uses all the measuring tools used by the fitter or vice hand, and in addition many others, as stretched lines, the spirit-level and plumb-level. Either of these tools forms the readiest means of testing whether surfaces that are widely removed and in different positions about a machine are parallel one to the other, it being evident that all surfaces standing vertical will be parallel, or all those standing horizontal will also be parallel, one to the other.