Valve Magazine - Summer 2009

valve,” Baker continues, “critical dimensions are compared to those required for new ones; but independent repair and/or remanufacturing shops typically do not have access to necessary engineering drawings that contain locations and magnitude of such critical dimensions.”

He adds that third party shops also may or may not measure wall thicknesses, let alone know the necessary location for such measurements to ensure continued compliance to dimensions originally engineered to meet appropriate ASME B16.34 pressure class code(s). “They may sandblast a valve and repaint it, but they probably don’t fully know whether the body wall still meets Class 600. Yet they typically leave the original OEM nameplate on or duplicate its information and sell it as a Class 600,” Baker says.

However, is it really a code 600? The original ASME design code for a control valve requires two conditions be met: having appropriate wall thickness to handle all applicable stresses and hydroing, says Baker, but “the rebuilder may only hydro it without measuring and verifying that the necessary wall thicknesses continue to be met for the pressure class.”

Problems can extend beyond the valve itself as well. For example, electronic or electrical instruments such as actuators or position indicators originally approved by a Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratory (NRTL) (FM Approvals or CSA), may be improperly repaired. “If a product was approved by FM Approvals and is then rebuilt, that product is no longer FM approved unless the manufacturer of that product did the repair,” says Steven Zenofsky, assistant vice president and manager, public relations at FM Global. But end users and repair or remanufacture shops may not know that reality. Baker cites an example in which a control valve remanufacturing shop exactly duplicated an OEM nameplate, added its own company name, and then also copied the FM Approval certification mark and all approval certification listings such as Class I, Div 1, Group B, C, D, etc. “It’s my understanding that FM Approvals quickly put a stop to that,” he says.

the inspection must know what to seek. Marc Tannenbaum, project manager, plant support engineering, EPRI, says that receipt inspectors should be trained to look for telltale signs. “One of the things we’ve seen with valves is that where an original equipment manufacturer’s logo is usually cast into the valve body, what we’ll see on a counterfeit is that the logo might actually be welded to the valve body and then cleaned up with a grinder,” he notes. “So it appears at a quick glance that it was cast into the valve body, but someone with a trained

eye can quickly tell something is wrong.”

Sometimes even the simplest visual check can spot a fake: In the case of the counterfeit Crane valves discovered by ARCO, the NRC report mentioned that “[d]uring … testing, ARCO found newspapers printed with Chinese characters in the valves,” which turned out to Taiwanese. On the other hand, “…in some instances, the valves are carefully made to the point that the counterfeit valves could not be distinguished from legitimate valves,” Cheta points out.

Companies that find a counterfeit

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