Page 72: of Marine Technology Magazine (September 2024)

MTR 100

REGAL REXNORD

Reducing Complexity in Marine Winches with Powertrain Solutions

By Jesse Dupuis, Director of Powertrain Product Management, Regal Rexnord

Copyright AdobeStock

The Challenge: in mind when designing the marine winch. The physical needs

An international engineering technology company that of the winch were high corrosion resistance in the harsh salt strives to develop unique, innovative, sustainable products for spray environment, a simpli? ed design to minimize potential their customers needed assistance with designing a marine failures and maintenance, and ensuring it was small enough to winch, which is a critical component in the marine industry. ? t the limited enclosure size on the vessel. Functionally, the

This component is used for the control, lifting, and retrieval of winch needed to meet the torque and speed requirements to remote operated vehicles (ROVs) on sea/ocean fairing vessels. have enough torque development to control, retrieve, and lift

The winch needed to lift a type of ROV called a hull cleaner, the ROVs, while also having dynamic braking to both let out which is designed to remove fouling on the ship hull. This re- more line for the ROVs and hold the brake to lock the line. duces the risk of transporting biological contamination across The Powertrain Solutions team partnered with the engineer- different zones, and improves fuel ef? ciency on the ship. ing technology company to come up with a

The company discovered they could not ? nd a winch solu- design that signi? cantly reduced the complexity, cost, and tion that met all their objectives on their own. They had an ini- weight of their original concept, while increasing tial concept in mind but wanted help reducing its complexity its robustness. The complexity was reduced by 58% by and potential maintenance. By partnering with the Powertrain eliminating seven components, such as the synchronous belt,

Solutions team at Regal Rexnord, they were able to eliminate sheaves, belt guard, and ? ange mounted bearing, and by com- components from their original concept, while meeting the bining the motor, brake, and encoder into one Kollmorgen™ tough demands of a seafaring application. servo motor.

The Solution: The Results:

There were both physical and functional challenges to keep In addition to reducing complexity, these changes reduced the 72 September/October 2024

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