Some jobs come with a manual. Some come with a classroom. But some you learn by getting your hands on the equipment, watching the people who have done it before and figuring things out as you go.
Refurbishing a 300-ton crane is one of those jobs.
Crane 42 will soon be back in action thanks to the Maintenance Transportation team.
The crew recently finished completing renovations that included reeving the whip line and main head block wire ropes. Next comes the load test.
Once the crane passes, it will be released back to production.
LEADING THE WORK
Getting it to this point has taken months of work from Facilities Engineering, Heavy Equipment Technicians (HET), Maintenance Electricians, Machinists, Riggers, Crane Operators and outside vendors.
The work is as big as the crane itself.
HETs installed travel gears and motors, overhauled the engine and made sure the crane’s wire ropes were correctly reeved. They also helped put the crane house and boom back together, work that meant spending long hours at height.
Riggers and Crane Operators provided the lifting, handling and positioning support needed throughout the project. Their skill was essential to safely disassemble, rebuild and reassemble the crane.
Maintenance Electricians disconnected and reinstalled electrical components, updated parts of the control system and tuned the drives.
The refurbishment also meant tackling significant corrosion and worn mechanical components. The complete control system was repaired and tested, and all of the swing rollers were removed and replaced. Installing swing rollers was a first for the facility.
MAKE IT WORK
With an older crane, fixing something isn’t always as simple as ordering a replacement.
“A lot of times, we’ll take a part that’s worn out and give it to a vendor and say, ‘make this,’ because they just don’t make it anymore,” said Bo Barbour, Maintenance Transportation Foreman.
That’s where experience and problem-solving come in.
“We’re updating a lot of the electrical components, tuning the drives and making sure everything works the way it’s supposed to,” said Gabriel Kibby, Maintenance Electrician. “We’ve got to rebuild and make a lot of things work, even when the parts are obsolete. We’ve got to improvise a lot.”
The team has to understand the equipment, but also how all of its pieces fit together after years of use, repairs and changes.
“Our group takes care of every crane in the shipyard,” Bo said.
That responsibility puts the team in the middle of the shipbuilding process. Their work starts long before a crane lifts a ship unit and continues through the final stages of a ship’s time at Ingalls.
“From the time a piece of metal comes in the gate, our equipment is part of the process,” Bo said. “This crew moves wing walls on the pontoons, helps during a ship launch and stays involved until the ship leaves us. The last thing that pulls the rope off the ship is a crane.”
It’s a lot of responsibility for a relatively small crew, and the work isn’t easy.
“It’s an extremely tough job that requires physical work from heights, but our crew is good,” said HET Philip Rupert.
THE KNOW-HOW
Many of the people on the crew are experienced tradesmen who are newer to working on these cranes. That makes working alongside people who have spent decades maintaining them especially valuable.
“There’s a lot of us that are newer to maintenance, so we don’t have the decades of knowledge,” Philip said. “It’s nice to have the help from the guys that have done it for a long time.”
Bo has been doing this work for about 30 years. He said this is the youngest crew he’s worked with, and one of the best.
“A lot of what we do is pass down knowledge because you can’t get this training anywhere else,” he said.
Crane No. 42 is a good example of why that knowledge matters.
Once it passes its load test, it will return to service and is expected to remain in good working condition for another 10 years.
That’s another decade of lifting and moving the pieces that become Navy ships and another decade of putting hard-earned knowledge to work.
Way to go, shipbuilders!