Bakker Sliedrecht has completed a retrofit of an obsolete deep-sea winch drive system for the Royal Netherlands Institute of Sea Research’s (NIOZ) vessel Pelagia.
NIOZ decided to improve the reliability of the deep-sea winch drive system before embarking on a research expedition.
To improve the reliability of the containerized deep-sea winch drive system, Bakker Sliedrecht replaced the obsolete Allen-Bradley drive system with an ABB ACS 880 air-cooled drive system.
The new drive system had to be placed in the existing cabinets of the obsolete drive system. To fit these dimensions, Bakker Sliedrecht engineered mechanical adjustments on the spot to fit the available space, the company explained.
The control unit of the deep-sea winch drive system was modified to work with the retrofitted drive system. Bakker Sliedrecht created a tailor-made interface to enable communication between the ABB drive modules and the Allen-Bradley PLC.
Furthermore, the obsolete coax control net industrial bus connection was replaced with a Ethernet connection to ensure its maintainability.
Thomas de Greef , head of National Marine Research Facilities at NIOZ said: “We are very pleased with the effort that Bakker Sliedrecht put into retrofitting the deep-sea drive system of the Pelagia. Their willingness to get the project done contributed to the timely start of the ocean research expedition.”