Working with the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and several utilities, Foster-Miller has designed a specialty minimally invasive system for performing difficult visual inspections in gas turbines. Most gas turbine operators have used borescopes or videoscopes to inspect their equipment and are well aware of these devices' limitations. Borescopes are too stiff to perform many inspection tasks in small complex pathways, and videoscopes are too flimsy to be pushed very far into combustion cans or up rows of blades. Our custom-engineered tool overcomes these difficulties with flexible yet controllable tooling to provide access to the entire turbine from a few easily accessed ports. 

Foster-Miller's inspection system provides significant cost savings and reduced downtimes over conventional methods that require outages. To perform a complete combustion system inspection, for example, conventional systems require a great deal of combustor disassembly, making them impractical. Foster-Miller's inspection system can be maneuvered throughout the entire combustion system through the access provided by the easily accessed flame detector and spark plug ports. 

From these access points, the tool can be maneuvered up and down each combustion can: from the fuel nozzles at one end to the first stage nozzles on the other. The tool can go from can to can by using the crossfire tubes connecting the cans. No other tool has the combination of stiffness and flexibility required.

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