Repairing and troubleshooting of deck crane no.1

by Florian
(Romania)

Morning time in the office. I was at my desk browsing my mail box. In one of the email received was about a job that I had to attend in that morning. One of our customers was calling urgently a service engineer for troubleshooting of deck crane no.1.

I got the job description. I had to attend to a vessel for a small electrical problem. Usually if its small means trouble.

I prepared my tool bag, safety boots and coverall and took off to the final destination. The ship was in the container terminal for cargo operation. The port was close to my office about 30 km.

I got on board of the vessel. The superintendent came to met me. When ship superintendent is on board early in the morning it smelts like big trouble.

After an open discussion with him I found out that during the night inside the crane was a fire. Luckily nobody was injured.

So… the hard work was starting. First we’ve planned proper and then we started the job. Of course everyone from ship side was willing to work and they were behaving nice maybe because of the superintendent or they realize that are facing a real problem.

The job wasn’t so complicated after all, just it will take time.

I inspected the damages done by the fire and I found the slip ring damaged, the main cable supply and lighting cable damaged. The cables were destroyed 7 meters above Slip ring, Emergency shutdown button and lighting switch also damaged.

That means the requires repairs was to order and install new slip-ring with special cable as well as Emergency Stop and crane house lighting switch.

All these repairs will take some time anyway but more urgently was operating the crane. We decided to repair the crane temporarily (by-pass the slip ring by joining new cable with old one as the crane was needed for completing cargo operations).

Connected the temporally main cables beneath the slip ring compartment.

I tried to start the crane and guess what the crane didn’t started.

Due to lack of maintenance of the crane the job was more difficult.

That visit the crane was stand still. I didn’t have enough time to solve the problem.

But next visits were useful and I managed to finish the remaining work.