Thread: Worst Shop Day Ever

There was a similar failure here in Hobart about 14 years back except the crane was supporting 2 of the ship's crew in a man cage at the time. Dropped to the deck and the headache ball fell on top of one of them. Both hospitalised for quite a period.

That cable *was* regularly inspected & greased but had rusted internally. There was a complete overhaul of procedures after that - I can't remember all the details any more.

The really scary bit was, only a week earlier, that exact same setup was being used to put people over the side of the ship onto sea ice for sampling. A failure then would have killed 3 people for sure as they were clipped in and the cage would have punched straight through the ice.

We stopped using the small crane to deploy people onto the ice after that, used the 25 tonner instead, and installed a test weight 3X the combined mass of the cage & people on the foredeck. Each deployment the test weight had to be lifted first. Plus the cables were removed and professionally pressure-greased every season.

I'm a great coward around suspended loads. This wasn't bad, nobody got hurt. Machinery & floors are replaceable.

PDW

I only got my crane ticket relatively recently, legal to 100t. But I can promise you that fibre cored FSWR in any role would make me back the heck away from. It's one thing to see a dry looking cable, but a style of core which was never mentioned by the various very experienced trainers I learned from, that's just frightening.
Gotta admit, when I went through the training for my various tickets, I always had a fresh moment that nigh on made me sit down in shock at how I survived some of the dodgy things I did when I was inexperienced and thought I knew better.

He got lucky. Can only hope he learned from that experience.
It is somewhat scary how often some of the most important items are completely neglected and overlooked.

I think that some of you blokes are being a bit harsh in your comments at times, and some statements may also be a bit off line at least as I understand the situation. Sometimes things can and do go wrong, even with lots of expertise being on tap, and enormous amounts of money spent to ensure a happy result. The Challenger Space shuttle disaster, and IIRC an Airbus Industrie demo flight at an airshow where the aircraft made a controlled decent into a forest being two prominent examples.
To say that we should not feel sorry for Brian and imply that he was some kind of redneck cowboy is just plain wrong in my view. He runs a farm, has a job in a machine shop and has a pretty big machine shop of his own, so he is no fool if you ask me. He was not standing under the load, yes he was close by but that is what you have to do if you have a fully manual crane and you have to pull on chainwheels to drive it. Remember it is not an electric crane with a remote control handset. The crane lifted the load, and if the rope had not been weakened by corrosion, there would have been no accident, as I don't believe that he was attempting to lift above the crane capacity.
As I understand it, the crane had two different chainwheels, one for maximum weight and another for lesser weights which would be somewhat higher geared, for faster lifting and lowering. I have worked at places where we had several 2 speed gantry cranes, and they generally had a 2X factor between high and low. For example one was a 50 Tonne crane in low range, but only 25 tonne in high range. To change from low to high, the crane was travelled to an access platform and the rigger would climb up and change gear on the 2 speed gearbox. These cranes were left in the 1/2 capacity but high speed mode unless a heavy lift was needed, and when the heavy lift work was completed, they would be put back into fast mode for the more usual lighter work.
This is what I understood Brian had done except that he may have changed the chain over to the low gear wheel, and I might add, you can't manually grossly overload a hoist, by that I mean if a crane is rated for a lift of 10 tonnes say, when you have 10 tonnes on it, you really know about it, and you won't be able to pull 15 or 20 tonnes, you would climb up the chain first, before the load was lifted.
This brings me to the use of fibre cored wire rope (FCWR) instead of internal wire rope core(IWRC). While it would be usual to use a IWRC rope, it is not always the case. I have seen unusual cranes used where there was a design consideration which necessitated a change from the more common designs. The now defunct APPM company had paper mills around the country, until they were split up and all the various arms disposed of. At one of their mills I had to do crane inspections, on one such unusual design crane. IIRC it had a 2 tonne capacity, but because sufficient headroom was in short supply, the crane had a very small diameter drum, which meant that the rope had to be of small diameter, to wrap around the small drum. The hook had 8 falls of 1/4" FCWR on it because of the design limitations, instead of probably 2 falls of 1/2" IWRC rope on a much larger diameter drum. On the night I performed that inspection, I found that the rope had worn severely, and indeed I felt fortunate because I had loaded it to near capacity to do checks on the hoist and travel brakes, before I had inspected the rope itself. When I let the hook down to the floor, and took all weight off the rope, then slightly twisted the rope to open the lay, there was about 10X the number of broken wires in the rope that it is permitted for the rope still to be considered safe. It was definitely an OMG moment. All rope has a safe working load, and I see no reason why a FCWR could not be used provided that it had sufficient capacity for its intended load. As I understand it, this crane had been installed in an outdoor location, and perhaps the rope had not been lubricated sufficiently or had dried out and the rope core (which usually is saturated in lubricant to lube the rope and prevent premature wear) became saturated with water and maybe even corrosive dusts which caused the rope to become damaged but not visibly damaged, because the rust and corrosion was all internal. The new rope that Brian has installed is a non rotating rope, I do not know what the old one was, but if it was also a non rotating rope, then it would not have had a fibre core, and would really have been pretty well impossible to inspect by any method that I am familiar with.
I'm also not sure that the loaded trailer travelled down any highway, but just from Brians old shop to his rebuilt barn as far as I know.

Originally Posted by Ropetangler

I'm also not sure that the loaded trailer travelled down any highway, but just from Brians old shop to his rebuilt barn as far as I know.

According to this video it was a 446 mile trip to collect it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BihWXx-hYdc

I also think some a being a bit harsh on him. I am going to search for and watch more of his videos. For those interested, he's started fixing the drill -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5v-_oQmps8

You can also donate if you want to share the cost of repairs. Details are in another video I have yet to watch.

Originally Posted by .RC.

According to this video it was a 446 mile trip to collect it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BihWXx-hYdc

You are absolutely correct Richard, he did make a long trip to collect the drill, I had originally thought that it was part of his equipment from his old shop, and did not realise that it was a new acquisition.
From watching the vid that you linked to, it seems that it was a larger and heavier unit that he had anticipated getting, but having made the trip he decided to go ahead with it anyway. Of course it was the wrong decision to make, but most of us if we are honest would have to say we have done similar acts because not doing them at the time would have involved lost opportunity, inconvenience or extra costs incurred etc. He was about 200 miles from home presumably, and felt the situation would best be resolved by going ahead with taking delivery with what he had available. He most likely broke the law in doing so but we also break the law when we do 113km/h in a 110 speed zone, or fail to come to a complete halt at a stop sign, but instead slow to a near stop, but proceed after checking that no one is coming toward us and close enough to be of any danger.
He said himself that he wouldn't want to be doing that again, having realised that it could have gone pear shaped very easily, and how lucky he had been to have had a clean run with nothing going wrong.
I can see why some have thought him a cowboy, although I disagree with that summation myself. I still consider him one of the many generous people who make their expertise available to the rest of us who lack those skills and experience, and am grateful for the many videos he produces.
It is also worth considering that he exposed his mistake to all and would have expected some flack for his efforts. The fact that he told (and showed) his viewers about the whole event, in order that we could avoid making similar mistakes, says a bit about the man in my view. Thats my 2 cents worth anyway, ok maybe 5cents.

Originally Posted by Ropetangler

The fact that he told (and showed) his viewers about the whole event, in order that we could avoid making similar mistakes, says a bit about the man in my view. Thats my 2 cents worth anyway, ok maybe 5cents.

It take an honest person to tell others where one stuffed up so others can learn from ones mistakes.

Originally Posted by Ropetangler

He was about 200 miles from home presumably, and felt the situation would best be resolved by going ahead with taking delivery with what he had available. He most likely broke the law in doing so but we also break the law when we do 113km/h in a 110 speed zone, or fail to come to a complete halt at a stop sign, but instead slow to a near stop, but proceed after checking that no one is coming toward us and close enough to be of any danger.

There is more than a slight difference between your examples and driving grossly overloaded, IMO. If he was 100kg overweight, no big deal. He was tons overweight - a better comparison would be driving at 120 km/h in a school zone at 0830 because you were late to work.

I've no criticisms of his work & handling of the lift - shyte happens to the best of us and if the lift was inside the theoretical SWL of the crane, a bad cable is just something you wouldn't expect - there's normally a factor of 4 between SWL and failure load as you know.

Nobody got hurt, a broken machine is unfortunate but there are more of them in the world. I wish him well in the repair or replacement.

PDW

From what I saw the chain block system used could have contributed to the cable break . When he was letting it down it did not move down at first as he was pulling the chain quite a while them all of a sudden it let go. I had a chain block like that , it would not let go smoothly on the way down and just suddenly dropped about 200 mm in one go . It's that shock that can exceed the strength of the cable , combine that with a weak corroded cable .

Originally Posted by Ropetangler

but most of us if we are honest would have to say we have done similar acts because not doing them at the time would have involved lost opportunity, inconvenience or extra costs incurred etc.

Probably not at that age. I will admit in my youth I owned an old Nissan Patrol with a massive 3.3l diesel motor. A friend at the time bought this old caravan. It must have weighed three tonnes and it had the round donut type connector. My patrol I had made a tractor type drawbar for it, so he asked me to pull it the 50km to his house. 20km of it was along the national highway. Only brakes were on my patrol, plus the caravan was wider then my car so I could not see behind me. They did give me a set of lights for the rear. And they replaced one dodgy tyre with a good second hand one. So off I went. Things went well until I got onto the main highway, then 3rd gear flat out was top speed, then it started swaying, then it came good, so I kept going with a km of traffic behind me.

Nearly off the highway and someone overtaking me said I had a flat tyre. Apparently when the swaying stopped and it pulled straight it was when the tyre blew. The tyre that blew was the one they replaced. Since we were only a km or two from getting off the highway, we said stuff it and pulled it the rest of the way with a flat tyre.

I was about 20 or so when I did that. I am a bit wiser now.

Or the time same car pulling a farm hay trailer with a few tonne of gravel down a slight incline. I only got about five metres until the trailer just pushed the car sideways and jack-knifed.

And as for machinery accidents, I ripped the headstock off a lathe yesterday. Although to be fair, that was the intention. since the turret lathe was given to me for nothing and had previously been sitting in the weather for years and was stuffed.

I heard a story many years ago about a guy who owned 2 VW Beetles, towing a huge mobile home/caravan up the South Eastern Freeway from Adelaide to a location up in the hills somewhere with one of these Beetles. When he got there he only had one left working.

Dean

Did the letters N, A, E and D make up his first name?

Originally Posted by .RC.

Did the letters N, A, E and D make up his first name?

Ha Ha. Not likely. I can honestly say I have never owned a VW. I have had a number of experiences relating to them, mostly bad, but only as a passenger.

Dean

Originally Posted by .RC.

And as for machinery accidents, I ripped the headstock off a lathe yesterday.

You had me worried for a bit there RC, in my mind's eye all I could see was light red! By the way, have you been visiting us in the Apple isle recently, because I saw these and have been wondering ever since.
IMG_1640 (1).jpgIMG_1641 (1).jpg
Rob

Originally Posted by PDW

There is more than a slight difference between your examples and driving grossly overloaded, IMO. If he was 100kg overweight, no big deal. He was tons overweight - a better comparison would be driving at 120 km/h in a school zone at 0830 because you were late to work.

I've no criticisms of his work & handling of the lift - shyte happens to the best of us and if the lift was inside the theoretical SWL of the crane, a bad cable is just something you wouldn't expect - there's normally a factor of 4 between SWL and failure load as you know.

Nobody got hurt, a broken machine is unfortunate but there are more of them in the world. I wish him well in the repair or replacement.

PDW

O.K. Point taken Pete, like you I wish him well, and judging by his work done so far, I'd say that he has an excellent chance of success, unless of course the damage is even worse than he has found so far.
Rob