Custom machine tackles difficult crane repair
A
Furmanite International product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team
Jul 7, 2008
Furmanite was called in to repair a crane in-situ, as the presence of liquid nitrogen made stripping down the crane hazardous.
Furmanite's ability to design and build a bespoke machine and undertake in-situ machining avoided the need for lengthy and costly downtime for a crane on a drilling platform in the Caspian, minimising the impact on production.
The main king post bearing on the platform crane had failed shortly after an overhaul, due to having been incorrectly fitted.
Traditionally, repair would have involved a lengthy stripping down of the crane to fit a new king post - a procedure that would also have been hazardous, as liquid nitrogen would have been required to remove the journal.
Instead Furmanite was called in to repair the 300mm diameter journal in-situ, as quickly as possible.
Failure of the bearing had resulted in severe scoring damage to the king post over a 490mm area.
Furmanite identified the requirements, which involved machining the damaged journal back to a 90% clean up, or rectification of the damage, to enable the installation of a stainless ring and composite low-friction ring to be fitted over it, instead of the bearing.
Tight access around the journal, limited to just 100mm radial clearance, however, meant a standard machine could not be used.
Furmanite was able to design and build a custom machine to carry out the repair within six weeks.
The machine incorporated a flange facing machine to provide the main drive, with a drop down arm designed and manufactured to rotate within the 100mm of radial clearance.
Due to the distance along the shaft that the machine needed to cut, a follower was designed and fitted to run opposite the toolpost, to guarantee a parallel finish on the shaft, so that the bush or sleeve could be manufactured and fitted.
The journal sleeve was also produced to fit over the damaged journal.
Cutting trials were carried out on a full-scale set-up at Furmanite's Kendal workshop to confirm the machine's capability to perform the task.
The work was undertaken in-situ, in 36 hours, involving machining the journal to take 3.95mm off the diameter, producing the 90% clean up required.
This allowed the sleeve to be fitted over the journal and the crane could then be built back up and put back into service.
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