Month: June 2020

Week 21: Preparing the Shop

Right now, the Alvin overhaul is overlapping with its 5 year maintenance. This is part of the schedule to tune up the equipment. Before we could start the maintenance work, we needed to know if we had enough parts and consumables. I sent this week going through the ET shop, gathering up pieces, finding part numbers, and logging it all on a spreadsheet. I know that doesn’t sound that exciting but I really enjoyed organizing everything and making that spreadsheet beautiful; there are so many rules in place to highlight cells for parts we need to order and to prevent the same part number from being logged multiple times. It’s almost like data entry can be fun and useful at the same time.

Before I got my hands on this, all the pins were mixed together and unlabeled

Week 20: Life without Alvin

Now that Alvin has been deconstructed, we’ve started to work on maintenance for the parts that have been removed. The mock sphere has it’s wires arranged so it can be powered up. We started off with some current measurements for the power distribution centers. The boxes are going to be redesigned so it’s important to know how much current each component draws so that the new box can provide enough to power everything at the same time. After that I started building a wiring harness to attach the data bottles to the mock sphere. The wiring harness that connects them on the sub is currently undergoing testing so we need something else in the meantime. I spent a lot of time measuring out and cutting wire (each harness needs to be 4 feet long and has 11 connectors, that’s a lot of wire), some of the wires need to be twisted in order to cancel out interference. Then it’s following the circuit diagram to get each wire to the correct connector and look nice at the same time.

A view of the mock sphere’s wiring

 

One of the wiring harnesses

Week 17: On the Walton Smith

This week we are getting ready for our ABS inspection. We were supposed to do this inspection a few months ago but it was canceled at the last minute due to Covid-19. We are now scheduled to leave here Saturday the 20th. The rest of the crew returned to the ship this week including the captan. For the last two months its just been me staying on the ship. We had to do a little bit to get things ready to sail again. First all the crew needed to get a Covid test done. So the university of Miami set us up with testing at their medical campus. We received the results the next day. Everyone came back negative for Covid. We also needed to have a small ABS inspection done before the ship was cleared to leave, because at this point the old one was expired. ABS sent one of their inspectors to the ship on Friday. We went through everything with them. They found no major problems so we were given a temporary pass. This pass was  just for the trip to the yard in Tampa where they will to the full inspection upon arrival. We also cleaned, organized and made sure we had everything we needed for the yard period.

Week 19: Alvin? What Alvin?

This week wraps up the Alvin disassembly. The sphere has been removed from the frame, the implodable volumes are accounted for and put into storage, the mock sphere is almost done being set up. I’ve spent this week doing little odds and ends: finishing up on the implodables, tracking down serial numbers, cleaning hardware, and learning to tap holes. In order to mount parts into the mock sphere, we have to drill holes into the metal shelves. Once the hole is drilled, it is tapped to add threading. This allows for items to be directly screwed into the shelves instead of using nuts and bolts. Now that Alvin is no more, we continue to set up the mock sphere and then start work on maintenance.

 

 

Week 16: On the Walton Smith

This week we did a few different projects. We went through all the air conditioners and cleaned all the filters. We are also experimenting by spraying the ACs with vinegar to inhibit mold growth. We went through all of the ship’s spill kits. The ship has a chemical spill kit in the wet lab. We have it just in case there is a chemical spill it can be cleaned up right away. The wet lab is also the only part on the ship that the scientist used dangerous chemicals. The other spill kits are meant for oil and fuel spills. These kits are kept on the deck. The ship has 2 windlesses which are used to lift the anchors. We took them both apart and made sure there were no problems. We cleaned the parts, then added new grease and reassembled them. We also cleaned the bilge and AC sea strainer for the communications room. This room houses all the computers, and is where all the electronics connect to. It can generate a bit of heat. it is really important to keep cool so it has a separate AC system just in case the main one goes down. 

Week 18: Very Little Sub Left

A lot of this week has been spent doing more paperwork and filling out more green tags. One fun thing I did was help put together shelves which meant I put on a safety harness and got to climb all over the shelving unit. A less fun thing was cleaning hardware; the mechs had taken tubing off Alvin and wanted to keep the fittings on the ends. So I took them apart (got myself covered in oil in the process), cleaned them, and tried to sort them. It’s really difficult when the bins to store the pieces are labeled by part number which is not on the actual part. After that, I started hunting down all the implodable volumes that had been taken off the sub and all the spares wherever they had been stored (I’ve written about implodable volumes previous in week 14). There is a long list of all the implodable volumes and I’ve been given the job to track them all down and store them in one location. Every item has a unique serial number that has to match what is on the list. Finding the serial number on the part and matching it to what it should be is quite the endeavor. 

Week 15: On the Walton Smith

The university sent two people from their medical campus that were in charge of health and safety to the ship. We gave them a tour and they gave us suggestions on how we can improve how we handle covid. They also checked our chemical lockers, wash station and fire fighting equipment. This was all done to start to prepare the ship for our ABS inspection as well as future trips. We may start doing trips again starting in July. At the end they gave us some good advice and a few small projects to improve things on the ship.

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