Once knowing what material we would be using, we then proceeded with producing a welding procedure. The shaft was pre-machined, and the spokes were prepped for welding. Quality assurance checks were done on the positioning of the spokes to the shaft. Once passed, the spokes were welded onto the shaft as per our drawings and the weld procedure. Stress relieving and non-destructive test were also done on the welds.

After the weld test reports had been completed and passed, the final machining of the shaft was done. The shaft went through more quality assurance checking before fitting it to the rotor.

The shaft was placed in liquid nitrogen to make it shrink. LPG burners were used to heat up the rotor. The rotor warmed up to expand the bore size so the shaft could fall into the rotor. The shaft was then lowered into the rotor, and as it returned to ambient temperature, the interference fit took up and held the shaft in the rotor. One more quality assurance check is done to check the position of the shaft to the rotor and for any run outs. The final stage is to send out the assembly for dynamic balancing.