Overhead cranes and other stuff

[Knobhead]

Not a question but I was having a rummage around my PC and found these pictures of some of the fun gear I got to play with.

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Anyone else got photo’s of things they’ve worked on?

 

[Guest123]

Not much on that scale Tony, Do a lot of maintenance work on sites near to me but that sort of industry doesn't exist locally.

 

[BigBreakfast]

I have workrd on overhead carnes before but twas many years ago and they were not to the scale of your cranes Tony. Intersting work though and usually very dirty and tight working space.

 

[Knobhead]

Unfortunately it doesn’t exist here now. The sites levelled.

The inside cranes scared the sh*t out of me the first time I went on one, in the end I was the only electrician licensed to drive one under load. 7 hooks from one crane could spell an awful tangle if you got it wrong. At one time there was a jib crane on the shop floor, just a glancing blow from one of the hooks wiped that out.

The outside cranes had a brilliant trick if it was windy, they’d f*ck off on their own! Who says sail power is dead. Driving them was funny, you select travel left and set off like a rocket on speed 1, coming back it would be struggling on full power. You can see the grey control panels, fun in winter, wind and snow. I unfolded a drawing and was just stood there holding the corners of the A0 drawing the rest vanished in to the distant horizon!

It was fun though unk:

 

[Des 56]

I knew a spark local to me,he was 4 or 5 years in front of me doing his time, who got killed working on an overhead crane

It can be an interesting, but very dangerous job, and sparks like Tony may have to eat and drink this danger often

With the pits and steel and manufacturing collapsed,there are now not nearly so many with Tonys skill left to maintain these sort of things any more

Those who talk of de skilling the trade better realise this sort of equipment still needs sparks who know their onions

 

[netblindpaul]

Funnily enough Tone I did one the a couple of weeks ago for a company, it had been down for months they had had several peeps to have a go and no one could fix it, got it done in less than half a day including setting up the access equipment and clearing down!
Easy when you know how, no drawings though so it took me a bit longer!
I am OK at heights as long as I feel safe which I don't generally unless it is genuinely safe!

 

[Knobhead]

The crane in the first 4 pictures had a twin on the same track. It failed and so was dumped at it’s end of the track for near 6 months. I’d transferred to a different part of the works for a while. On my return, “errm can you have a look at the west crane”, after I’d come back out of orbit I just took one tool with me up to the crane, a hammer (small). One tap and low and behold, action! I flatly refused to tell anyone what I hit. (I hadn’t, I just used the handle to rattle two relays but the hammer looked good).

BTW the crane manufacturers idea of a relay would be a 20HP contactor anywhere else, everything was to battleship standards. The cranes had 2 switch rooms built in to each of the outer* booms, all the switchgear was open with just a handrail to stop you falling on it.
*There were 4 booms with 2 cross travel crabs, the lower iner crab could pass under the larger outer crab. Each crab had 2 winch drums.

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[bomjac]

First experience of cranes was the test panel myself and my cousin managed to get smoking in the training school as 2nd year apprentices. All DC contactors, relays and arc chutes. Had to point to point the entire panel back to find the short (which was a work of arc, done in solid drawn, round copper bars !). Boy were we relieved when we found the short.

Fast forward 3 years to the steelworks and there I am trying to fathom out why the ore bridge crane wont work, absolute bitch of a machine to fix due to the habit it had of crabbing out of alignment when the rails were full of crap. The safety equipment would stop it from moving one set of motor drives until you had gotten it back into alignment. This was also a favourite trick of the Barrel reclaimers. Crane was fed by 500 V DC IIRC, from the spookiest thing you ever will see - a room with 3 huge mercury arc rectifiers which gave off a glow like Frankensteins lab with the arc jumping over a pool of mercury inside a Vacuum tube.

The barrel reclaimers, stocking out machines and bucket wheel - all of which lived at the end of a 600 metre 3.3kV cable, each with their own 3.3k/440V transformer on them. Getting rather sentimental now about trying to joint those cables in winter nights with a blizzard blowing around me.

I still miss working with the big, chunky stuff, the buzz of fixing a fault on a few hundred tons of machine and actually seeing the end product of our spoils trundling down a track in a torpedo carrier past you on its from the Blast Furnace to the BOS plant.

I don't have any pics unfortunately, but do a google image search on them if you want to get an idea of the plant mentioned here.

 

[Knobhead]

My old friend Rodney the rectifier!

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[telectrix]

jeez, tony. i wouldn't have a clue where to start on some of that gear. the nearest i've been to a crane is the one that was hefting the packs of bricks on site.

 

[Knobhead]

What worries me now is young lads coming along with statements like “I’m going to fit 2 inverters to a crane” when it’s clear they don’t have a clue how it works in the first place. No doubt liability insurance will be ignored for the work! It’s a dangerous game to get in to, not just the risk of injury to yourself, but to others.

 

[netblindpaul]

I like your pics of the Mercury Arc rectifier mate! (Or at least that is what it looks like on this pesky machine here!)

Thing is Tony this is the 5DW thinking they are an electrician and also an electrical engineer!

I hope it does not take a death for this to be realised, there is so much more legislation and statute law surrounding commercial and industrial fixed wiring and machinery which is just not covered in a 5DW/Electrical Trainee course ore even in a normal installation course, also, well, is machinery covered at all, I don't think it is.

It is VERY worrying to be honest.

 

[Engineer54]

I'd say it's a dammed sight worse than just very worrying!! Students and trainees are not getting much of the basics in their training these days, and very little if any work experience, before they are let loose to practise what little they do know!! Passing the very basic C&G exams to me, is not becoming an electrician, it's just the first of many steps. From what i can see, there are loop holes everywhere, making it easier for the basically untrained to officially call themselves electricians. Scam providers are even setting there own cert's now, issuing fake 2391 that is overall, impossible to fail!!!

De-skilling of our industry will bring untold problems for the UK in the future, especially to whatever industries we have left... We'll end up being like the Middle East, having to import fully trained and qualified electricians and engineers to cover our industries skill needs.

In one respect i'm pleased that i will probably not be around to see or witness that scenario, but in another, it really makes my blood boil, at the lack of interest of successive governments, until it's too dammed late that is!!!

 

[Knobhead]

Going by some of the questions asked on here about basic motor starters I don’t think any of it is covered in collages now.
One company I worked for had to employ a couple of contract “industrial maintenance/breakdown” electricians at short notice. They took the best they could find, but dear me, it finished up a total shambles! I got involved with trying to train them while at the same time trying to keep another plant running, I was run ragged. When asked if I could train them on the PLC programs I flatly refused. They were beyond training!

:willy_nilly: Sorry for the rant :willy_nilly:

 

[Engineer54]

I wouldn't call that so much as a rant, it's just being honest about your experiences!!

It's not all bad news, there are some trainee's that are as keen as mustard (and we have one or two good examples on the forum) and it shows. The problem is, what future incentives are there for these guys to continue gaining more and more knowledge and experience? The only hope these days is to specialise in a specific lucrative area of our industry, as it seems no-one is interested in those that have a general overall ability to undertake work in any area, as we were once trained to do.

As i stated before, it seems the only electricians being trained today are those entering the domestic side of our industry. Very little training if any is given in the use and installation of motors and their control, very litle on 3 phase theory or it's installation. In fact the list can and does go on and on, like MICC applications, conduit bending/setting, tray and trunking fabrication, basic FA set ups, etc , etc!! In fact i'm not sure whether they even get trained in single wire installations at all, i'd love to see a newly qualified electrician wire an existing conduit system, ....he'd probably be able to wire it, ...but what the state of the single wires are going to be in on completion is another matter. Wire pulling is a skill on it's own!!

We have got to get back, to where C&G courses, and other cert's actually mean something, where pass marks are set at a realistic competency level, not at the lowest denominator. I've never understood sitting exams with an open book on your table, that's meaningless to me. If they want this type of exam, then class it as level 1 full stop!! Our education and training system needs a dammed good shake-up, bring back the old ''Technical schools'' so that those youngsters that are interested in trades and technical professions are given a good initial start where there education biased towards that end.

Will any of this happen, who knows, the chances are maybe, but only after the horse has already bolted, .....It's the ''British Way!!'' Right?? lol!!!

 

[Knobhead]

Only one thing I’d slightly disagree on is open book exams. In your work if you can’t remember something on site you go to a bookshelf to find the answer. I know I have had to do so many times. Ok it’s probably a computer now, but if you need a formulae, why not? There is still the requirement to know how to put it in to practical terms.

Our 5DW’s are great on quoting regulations and can probably browbeat the average domestic customer in to submission. BUT I wonder how they put the regulations to practical use!



Just giving the cranes in the first set of pictures as an example, I found the earth leakage relays didn’t work. So after a lot of paper chasing I found out who had disabled them, he’d been pushing up daisies for 15 years. OK so get the E/L units working again. NOT a good idea, I set fire to one 800A ACB and wasn’t allowed near the other! Next idea, a 400A down shop earth conductor, it would only cost £50K. I think the words F**K OFF were used in the office.

You can spout regulations until they come out of your ears, you’ll get nowhere when you run in to production management and accountants!

I did sort it in the end but it took me three months!

 

[Engineer54]

Only one thing I’d slightly disagree on is open book exams. In your work if you can’t remember something on site you go to a bookshelf to find the answer. I know I have had to do so many times. Ok it’s probably a computer now, but if you need a formulae, why not? There is still the requirement to know how to put it in to practical terms.

Not at all, not in an examination to assess your competency in a given subject. You have to remember that these days Tony, the students/trainee's have it much easier than we did. They don't have to remember what they had been taught over the last 12 month period like we had too, they only need to remember what they have been taught, over at most 9 or 10 weeks. Sometimes a lot less, ...if the course is based on ''credits'' gained, which in effect means, they are taught in modules!! At the end of each short module they sit a mini exam, pass and gain a credit. Some of these modules are a couple of weeks long ...lol!! Why the hell would they need an open book!!!

I can't remember sitting a single exam during my training times, of having the luxury of an open book on my table. That went for the companies non-electrical exams too.. It was in my time, and i'm sure in yours also, down to dammed hard study time and revision time before sitting those all important exams...

 

[Knobhead]

This picture shows a crane on which I’ve had one of the most bizarre faults ever. It was forever tripping on long travel overload. So I’m in the cross boom taking current readings while the driver tried to carry on as normal. Every so often the current went mad.
Now I couldn’t see where we were on the length of the track so I called for the fitters to come and help. They were running alongside the crane as it travelled and I was shouting out the current readings as we travelled. Every time I called out the currents going up they were shouting back the wheels are binding. Next trick was to get a laser measure between the tracks. It was 1½“ wider in the middle of the building!
If you look at the picture you can see the cross bracing we had to install to pull the building back together.
It all came down to saving on overtime, the production lads would come in on overtime to clean the roof, but to save money the “management” had stopped that.

It took near 4 months to get the building tied back in to the right shape. It had sagged in the middle with all the $hit on the roof. And cost a bloody fortune in O/T, non of which I got to see!
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[Engineer54]

Geezus!! ...Look at the amount of build-up on the steel work in that photo!! What the hell are your lungs like Tony, working in those sort of conditions??

 

[Knobhead]

More fun stuff. This is where I started wrecking things

Tarmac Buxton Lime quarry blast - YouTube