“Availability of spare parts after 10-15 years is a particular problem. For example, because of rapidly developing technology in the field of electronic components, original or compatible printed circuit boards and their components may simply no longer be obtainable after this period of time. Not all manufacturers will support availability of spare parts for their products for such a long period. Then crane downtime becomes a very serious economic factor. This is a very common problem that experienced users will recognize.”<\/p>\n
One of the safety features that many container quay cranes lack is snag load protection. A damaged cell guide, spreader or container can cause the hoisted load to jam and stop instantly in the cell guide while the crane hoisting machinery is rotating at high speed. The large rotating mass or flywheel effect of the drive mechanism creates uncontrolled stresses on load path components and the crane structure. Induced loads in these conditions can be many times the allowable stresses in components and structures that experience the resulting shock load. High speed, high energy snags can:<\/p>\n
break the hoist ropes damage the container spreader damage the hoist machinery damage the crane structure.<\/p>\n
Automatic centralised lubrication which automatically delivers the correct amount of lubricant at the correct time intervals to the correct location, is also important.<\/p>\n
“Several such systems can be fitted to a crane, with one for the machinery house, one for the trolley and two for the gantry systems, ” they say. “A common problem encountered by ports in Middle East desert conditions is the high sand content in the atmosphere. Furthermore, such sand has a high silica content that is both abrasive and corrosive. Centralised\/automatic lubrication systems can help to prevent ingress of sand by simply ensuring that the complete lubrication system is sealed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In a paper entitled Crane Modernisation – Why and How, Tek Soon Chong, Jimmy Liang and Peter Darley of Singapores Portek, pick up on a number of useful component issues including that of spare part availability: ” The heart of a container quay crane is the drive control system, ” they say. ” The economic life of the drive control system is about 15 years. The technology, performance standards and reliability of drive control systems are continually evolving. After 15 years, changing technology and diminishing spare parts support makes the overall performance of the drive less than satisfactory to the user in comparison to what is available with new equipment. Less availability means less revenue and higher operating costs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-1189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-container-cargo-handling"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1189"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=1189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}