Last week we had to put our engineering brains to good use to give our client a safe alternative to the current practices, and thought you’d like to see the results.
Having attended a vessel to service the main engines, we found that it had been adapted to drive a hydraulic pump from the free end, which meant the barring tool had been removed from the damper.
This is the normal set up compared to arrangement we found:
Without this flange, the crew have been barring the engine over using a crow bar in the union joint for the propshaft. Not something we would recommend!
As the only OEM recommended method of barring the engine had been removed, we had to come up with a safe alternative.
Combining our engine knowledge and in-house manufacturing capabilities, we have designed a prototype tool, utilising the drive coupling for the pump, which looks like this and sits in the hole shown with the socket below:
Gary, our senior machinist, didn’t want us to show this photo as it’s still in the prototype stage and not up to his finished standards. We, on the other hand, thought this may be useful in case you too needed an engineering solution to be able to operate safer.
