A contract to survey a 900 meter tunnel using the Seaeye Falcon ROV necessitated the purchase of over 1Km of Umbilical.
Two challenges had to be overcome.
- The practical limit of cable distance for Video and Serial data telemetry
- Management of the cable length at the launch point
Challenge 1
Using in house resources and expertise, a Fibre Optic upgrade was specified and installed, See the Blog post “Feb 2016 1100 Meter Umbilical ” for more information
Challenge 2
Using Vocean resources and expertise, an umbilical winch was designed and manufactured. Based on a 1 meter wide cable drum, the total length of 1140M is accomodated on 10 Layers with 71 turns per layer.
The winch includes an intelligent odometer which is transferred to a display unit in the control room and can be overlayed on the recorded video.
The drum is rotated via a gearbox and electric motor. A simple hand controller allows the operator to set the speed of rotation.
