11/28
We woke after the Thanksgiving holiday with a full crew again and lots of things to do! The techs first task was to test the .322 cable used for the CTD. This testing involved the use of a Megger instrument to test each wire within the cable for insulation resistance and a few other things.
The insulation resistance (as the name implies) measures how well insulated the wire in question is, and this mainly tells us how damaged each wire is. The techs test the cable before and after cutting it each time for re-termination, and the results compared to each other are how they gauge the health of the cable. A high insulation resistance reading means the cable is performing well, and a low reading (especially compared to a previous reading) means its probably time to re-terminate.
The techs re-terminate this highly-used cable about every six months or so, so when our readings were complete and to no one’s surprise, the numbers were a bit low, Sonia handed me the angle grinder and had me cut the cable.
(The new end, taped up and ready for re-termination later this week!)
We then all moved onto one of the biggest tasks, removing the hatch from the science hold to empty the space of all the SSSG equipment. The hatch was unbolted and wire baskets were lowered down!
We ended up filling five baskets with secondary and backup equipment! It took most of the afternoon but in the end it was great to get this task done at the beginning of the week while we were very motivated!
11/29
The weather prevented some outdoor operations, so we worked on inside projects like securing the cable runs in each lab space and taking down even more unnecessary runs.
The biggest excitement of the day was a run to Home Depot! Sonia and I used one of the WHOI trucks available to employees, (since the plywood we needed definitely wouldn’t fit in my car) and drove up to get some 2x4s and sheets of plywood to build a new platform for the CTD cart. Construction on that project will begin tomorrow!
11/30
I began the long process of cutting all the pieces for the new platform. I use the term long, not because I had trouble cutting all the pieces out, but because all the pieces had to be fitted to their individual spots on the cart frame as I discovered none were interchangeable. Once I had all the pieces cut out I used an orbital sander to fine-tune the pieces and bevel the edges to fit close to the frame’s weld seams. This maybe was not the ‘proper’ tool for the job but with the roughest grit sandpaper I could make sure each piece fit perfectly without hefting a large saw around.
During the day most of the crew was occupied for an ABS (American Bureau of Shipping) inspection, the first inspection group to start our battery of inspections in the coming week. To stay out of their way we fitted all the pieces of the cart in and screwed them down, before adding the plywood and ensuring the new platform was stable. Unfortunately we had to take the platform apart for the next step in my process, paint!
12/1
Today’s inspection was from the Coast Guard, so the techs again tried to stay out of the way by spending the morning securing more cable runs. If this sounds repetitive by now just remember I can only cut so many zip ties in a day before needing to move on to another project! Also you might be shocked at the sheer amount of cabling on a ship!
On a lighter note I was given a full tutorial on how to access the 3D printer onboard wirelessly and also spent time today fine-tuning my designs for parts the engineers wanted us to print. These were the outlet covers and end caps, and after a few re-designs I had two functional parts that can now be printed on-demand when they are noticed to be missing.
The only part of the inspection the techs were expected to participate in were the drills, these being a fire and an abandon ship drill. As we have practiced before, at the sound of the alarm we gathered our immersion suits (no one needed to put any on this time, thankfully) and life jackets and mustered ourselves in the main lab. A key to mustering for a drill is (in colder months) DRESSING FOR THE WEATHER OUTSIDE. When I got onboard it was stressed heavily in a real emergency at cold temperatures, evacuating in flimsy clothes and then freezing to death anyways was not the goal. The coast guard in a debrief later praised us all for being so prepared.
After the drill I embarked on the final step of the new CTD platform, the paint! This is an attempt to keep the platform from degrading with the repeated saltwater it gets on it. I say attempt here because we all know trying to keep saltwater out of places to prevent rot or rust is almost always an exercise in futility. In the spirit of trying to keep the wood from turning green and rotting beneath the CTD the techs told me to try painting it to seal it a bit more. After some research we learned that some types of paint we already had onboard, namely the Rustoleum, could also be used on wood!
This led us to conclude that the easiest and most efficient way of getting this platform done was to use that paint. I began by giving the plywood a light sanding with my friend the orbital sander, and going over the boards with a cloth to sweep all the dust away. I then covered both sides of each board with the Rustoleum primer, leaving them to dry for more paint tomorrow!
12/2
Happy Friday! Thankfully we didn’t have any inspections today so I jumped right in with the first coat of white on the platform boards. I was told to let this dry for longer as the paint interacts with its primer and the interaction could be interesting because it was on wood.
Emily and I then moved on to one of the biggest tasks of this internship, learning that all-important skill of CTD cable terminating! We peeled back the layers of the cable, starting with the shielding layers that also act as ground, taking them back about two feet to have enough of the wires to work with. The cable has two layers of steel shielding which also acts as the cable’s ground, so two strands of this were preserved for attaching to the green ground plug. From here was standard wire terminating, stripping the wire, and blending the wire from the cable into the wire to its respective plug.
Emily then got down to showing me how to solder the wires together without burning the casing, then running layers of self-fusing tape, before adding final layers of vinyl electrical tape. This is done for all three wires encased within the CTD cable, then we added the ground connection which didn’t require soldering. All 4 of these new connections were wrapped with even more tape to attempt to keep as much water out as possible.
Both techs stressed that terminating this cable is something done often onboard research vessels, and every tech will have their own way of doing it.
We finished up the termination and celebrated! Many people were going home for the weekend so the next few days will be focused on indoor projects and organization.