Mooring winch system

US4272706A · kind A · utility

Assignee

• Northern Engineering Industries plc · GB

Inventor

• William Mcinnes Somerville · Sydney, AU

Key dates

• Filing date: Oct 25, 1978
• Grant date: Jun 9, 1981
• Expiry date: Oct 25, 1998

Classification

• Technology area (CPC B): Performing Operations; Transporting
• CPC primary: B66D1/505
• WIPO field: Handling
• WIPO sector: Mechanical engineering

Abstract

A mooring winch system in which automatic mooring duty is performed by a winch having an AC motor fed from the supply via a converter which includes a DC to AC inverter, the convertor producing a balanced three-phase square, quasi-square, sinusoidal or quasi-sinusoidal output. The motor thus can stall indefinitely, be driven in the sense of rope payout by tension force in the mooring rope, or run in the opposite sense to recover rope, without exceeding its rated temperature for that duty. Rope recovery is adequate both for normal duties and also where higher speeds of recovery are required and rope tension is maintained substantially constant throughout.