EE in maritime

  • #1
isquaredr
4
4
Hello everyone, I've recently found myself missing the days of php based internet forums, long-text formats with a good culture and personality.
It sounds ridiculously corny to make personal introductions as a newcomer but I guess it's a breath of fresh air to have to write one in today's very fast paced forums where people just come and go(im looking at you reddit) at the cost of the fun of making meaningful relations in a forum culture.

Background: I currently work as a lone electrical engineer in a ship(merchant maritime industry), aside from the usual job a seafaring EE is associated with, much of my time is spent keeping two very old(27 yrs) Gantry Cranes in top condition. The crane is running on a Beckhoff PLC module that is the brain power for all safety mechanisms like driving stop limits, motor overspeeds, interlocks, etc. etc. Our hoisting motors(that can lift up to 50 ton loads) are DC motors that are Ward-Leonard driven(?), the DC drive consists of a thyristor controlled rectifier assembly with a tachogenerator as an rpm feedback for controlling the DC armature current corresponsive of the load, the load is measured by 4 load-cells(load sensors) that operate on the concept of strain gauge.

The crane runs mostly on electro-hydraulic for other stuff, we also have the other crane running on VFD but I think I've written enough for my introduction. I'm looking forward to share my knowledge and experiences that comes about from being a lone engineer with only manuals to refer to, and sometimes the internet(if the former dont suffice). The exciting thing with being a lone EE though is the challenge of having to work under a time-constraint when the cranes bog down and need to be troubleshooted as fast as possible so cargo operations can resume, as time lost during malfunction of our cranes is money lost to the company(by the minute we are charged thousands of dollars if a problem can't be fixed after usually in half an hour, it depends per situation). You can't really get anything much out of anyone else in here aside from some mechanical jobs help. It's also nice to participate in text-based forums as they don't demand much bandwidth since internet at sea is very limited and slow(could be an ISP problem). I'm open to anything for discussion and will respond to anything I see myself fit to have enough knowledge on to contribute. I will be posting some of my past and future work that might be interesting for you people(in the EE sub-forum), until then, I hope you are all having a good day. Cheers.
 
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  • #3
You are never alone here.

You can ask a vague question, then watch the members compete to find every possible answer. Great entertainment, just like feeding seagulls.
 
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Likes Bystander, berkeman, phinds and 1 other person
  • #4
Baluncore said:
You are never alone here.

You can ask a vague question, then watch the members compete to find every possible answer. Great entertainment, just like feeding seagulls.

I believe it's much more fun that way than talking to an AI and just go about in circles praying for it to understand some very niche topic youre trying to get at.
 
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Likes Bystander
  • #5
Welcome to PF.
 
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