Skids

[Ray Shields]

In case you hadn’t guessed, I just wanted to start a few discussions that didn’t involve the question "how do I get into ROVs" 😀

Underslung skids, how successful are they? Slingsby vehicles were all initially designed to plug into a 4 point skid. The idea being the vehicle would be the core thrusters/power/comms system and the skid would do the job you needed doing.

Just like Thunderbirds 2 and its different pods.

FCVs are designed the same, fit the sid you need to do the job.

However.

How successful has it been? The problems – you may need to carry 2 or 3 skids to do the jobs you need to do (a survey skid, a manip skid,a tooling skid). Where the hell do you store all these skids?? How do you get them onto the LARS trolly to fit them?

In reality, you just fit the gear you need onto the ROV and off you go (god bless Band It!).

Have there been any successful use of using multiple skids on an ROV or do most people just fit the gear they need to use to the sub?

[marley]

Only used two different skids really, one was a VBS/Flot tool skid and the other was an Injection/Flot tool skid. Both setups seem to work good for the intended job. These skids both had two purposes in one rather then stacking multiple skids. Cheers

[Scott Beveridge]

Ray,

Designed / fabricated in the mid-eighties was a multi-function skid built by Perry (singular co. back then) under contract and design from an ROV co and a wellhead co. (completions). Had variable ballast (450kg. lift) using a 4 tank glycol / bladder-type system, glycol hot-stabs (obviously), a conical (yes!!!) TQ tool hard-mounted w/variable tq (tho’ one still had to change the effectors (sockets)), with a few mods to fit a small water blaster (wasn’t done before I left). Other vehicles had hot stab receptacles on them for a "refill" or "top-up" if they either had a leak (in the glycol system) or had a "problem. Everything subsea was modular and work packs / replacement nodes could be sent down by a tugger / work basket configuration. In this work basket configuration, a high TQ tool extention was also available. And other items were being discussed.

Considering that this was designed in the 80’s ("back in my day" technology) and still to this day (WHY DO ) we have to bring the vehicles to deck and swap, plumb, plug in (a not-so-plug-and-play-way), test, etc. when one can keep a vehicle in the water til’ it breaks down (hope not and not the preferred scenario)or until the required maint must be completed and the client has got to let us do it (NOTE FOR marketing dogs!!!!) allot the time on the contract(s). Question for all….. what in the heck ever happened to a skid like that???? Anybody from OI got the answer??? Hint, hint…

[Alex Kerr]

Having to build and modify skids regularly, agree that the problem is storage, only way I have found has been to build a skid for the general scope of work , with multiple bracketing points and "quick fix" (ty-wraps, bolts & jubilees ) components as necessary.
😉

sanity is madness put to good use

[rovnumpty]

Ray.

Skids. Right up there with the chocolate frying pan for silly ideas.

Fair enough if it’s some huge bit of tooling – connection tool, pull in tool etc. Bloody silly for anything else.

Sonsub keep trying to foist survey skids onto us. Usually end up pulling all the gear off the skid and bolting it to the ROV directly. Problem is they let their engineers design it, so you have a skid capable of supporting 20 tonnes of gear, with an extra tonne of bouyancy to make the damn thing float.

Once that’s bolted to the bottom of sub, your 150 HP ROV suddenly feels more like 40hp. It’s the old ‘one direction of movement at a time’ routine.

Somebody really needs to educate all these ‘sub-surface engineers’ in the difference between weightless and massless.

[Author]

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