Customised wireless telemetry mooring link load cell!

With a range of ex-stock bow shackle load cells LCM Systems is able to offer next day delivery on its range of standard TELSHACK-B load cells. However, sometimes the off-the-shelf solution isn’t quite right for a customers’ specific application and it’s here where LCM’s in-house design team and extensive experience in customising load cells gives LCM a competitive advantage.

This happened recently when a multi-national marine engineering company in Canada enquired about the TELSHACK-B load cell. They liked the principle of a wireless telemetry shackle, but wanted to measure ship docking tension on a winch. The main requirements were that the load cell had to be shackle style; it had to be light enough for a single operator to lift it manually, yet it had to be robust enough for use in an offshore and heavy industrial environment. Additionally, the solution had to be wireless so as to avoid trailing cables and full traceability was required on all materials. This was hard to achieve with a conventional shackle, when the measurement range is 85te. But this did not daunt LCM’s design engineers. A more compact, lightweight solution was needed.

The result was the LCM3782 85te Wireless Telemetry Mooring Link Load Cell. Stainless steel was the manufacturing material of choice in order to keep the load cell light but strong. The solution was to use a compact 180T Tonsberg Mooring Link, the load cell pin was replaced with a stainless steel pin and the wireless telemetry housing was also constructed from stainless steel. This made the shackle load cell light enough make operating the winch a one-man operation and a handheld battery powered display was supplied, with a gross/net facility for monitoring ease. To further ensure that the system could withstand the harsh operating conditions it was sealed to IP67 and the complete system was supplied fully calibrated and issued with certificates, traceable to UKAS.

Commenting on the project, Steve Sargeant, Managing Director at LCM Systems says: “We encourage customers who do not see exactly what they want on our website to call us with their specific applications. This way, if we don’t have a standard product that is entirely suitable, we can customised existing load cells or design a completely new product to customers’ exacting requirements.”