Tour of Great Lakes power
We had Scheduled the arrival time to be between 10:00 – 11:00 AM at Great Lakes Power Inc. knowing some of our guys had a bit of a drive to get there. Everyone was there right on time by 10:30. Our host and CEO of GLPI is a good friend, Mr. Harry Allen. He came down and gave us an overview of what his company did along with how and where they started. Harry’s Dad worked in the steel industry for decades which is where Harry got his start.
Harry told us about the many products they sell, service and repair. He also told us about his days in boating in his younger years along with how they developed a surface piercing drive for a Diesel powered offshore style racing boat that they broke the Detroit to Buffalo record averaging 80+mph.
GLPI deals with drive train equipment for all kinds of Marine, commercial, agricultural and off road equipment. The list is quite long to include axels for fork lifts, both steering and power drive axels. Transmissions for off road vehicles, fork lifts and marine. They also repair and rebuild this equipment. Dave, Harry’s son also works there and explained what were some of the problems they encounter. He showed us an axel assembly and asked where we thought it was made ? Hungary ? They found a defect in this particular casting and explained there was a seal surface that didn’t meet specifications for smoothness and would eventually leak oil. They have to regrind the surface which many times requires hand sanding to bring it into specs.
As Harry and Dave walked us thru the different rebuilding area, some of the workers would show us what repairs they were working on. These Axels, transmissions and drive train components are huge which require either a crane or forklift to move them around to the various work stations. The equipment they have handles these chores very effectively. Their shelving consists of literally hundreds of pieces waiting for repair in one section, and an equally big section where they stored new repair parts.
Next in the tour was a transmission that is used in the fracking industry. It produces the power that drives the drill point down a couple miles then out an equal distance in several directions to recover the oil. Another product they sell, repair and rebuild are pneumatic or air starter motors for everything from a 5hp engine up to a 3000 hp engine. What was so fascinating about these starters was that they were a turbine design. The turbine wheels inside the one Dave showed us was an aluminum disk about 6” in diameter with U shaped fins machined around the circumference of the disk. There were two disks in the starter Dave showed us which drive a planetary gear reduction to drive the bendix gear.
One of the hi-lites of the tour to me was seeing the 300hp British built “Cox” Diesel outboard they had on display, Harry said they saved it just for us so we could check it out, and it truly is huge in size ! The cowl houses a 4 cycle V8 power head that stands vertical in position and is about 7-8ft tall overall.
By now it was lunch time, with the help of Harry’s administrative assistant Chris Apicello we had all ordered some kind of Lunch sandwich from one of the local restaurants and were invited to use their cafeteria to dine in. As an observation, their entire facility is state of the art in construction, design an functionality.
After lunch Harry asked if we would like to see his office and some of the board rooms, of course we all headed up to his office. He has some special items he wanted to show us, one was his Oak Roll top desk, another was an all brass maritime clock that was rescued from one of the lake freighters that caught on fire. He had stories and pictures of three freighters, one that was named after his Dad.
We all headed back down and thanked Harry and his crew for a fantastic tour.
This write up is only a brief overview of what GLPI represents in the Industrial world ! We as Ohioans can be very grateful for having Companies like GLPI in or state !