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Lock out proceures in Manitcore Ascendant..

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Lock out proceures in Manitcore Ascendant..
Post by Quarthinos   » Fri Jul 16, 2021 6:50 pm

Quarthinos
Midshipman

Posts: 4
Joined: Tue Jul 07, 2015 2:44 pm

So I'm confused. On Earth, when an electrical component is locked out, it literally gets a padlock on the switch. I'm pretty sure everyone has their own padlock and key, so you can't remove the lockout easily. Yet on the HMS Vangaurd, when crew was on the hull to do work on a high-power system, the lock out was "inadvertently" bypassed, leading to a Dutchman and a spacer being sent permanently ground side because of psych trauma. And all that was going to happen is a refresher of procedures?!?

WHAT THE HELL?

If this is going to continue to happen, then I'm just going to put this book down and walk away, because that's serious BS.
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Re: Lock out proceures in Manitcore Ascendant..
Post by cthia   » Fri Jul 16, 2021 9:20 pm

cthia
Fleet Admiral

Posts: 14951
Joined: Thu Jan 23, 2014 1:10 pm

I assume you are referencing the 6 steps of lockout tagout. LOTO. If not, do forgive me.

If so, please note that the system is not foolproof, and accidents have happened and will continue to do so. There are simply too many things that can happen to circumvent the safety measures. In one particular company I worked for, they stressed redundancy in live bodies involved in the LOTO, which can cause problems of its own. Many problems arise when key personnel involved in the LOTO are injured, fall sick (heart attack, etc.), and the remaining personnel are not adequately familiar with the shutdown. The information obtained in Step 1, Preparation, is not always widely distributed, shared. If at all. The situation doesn't always warrant it.

On a warship, I imagine there must be a way to bypass LOTO procedures. The death of an individual or individuals is secondary to the destruction of the ship.

Also, repairs can sometimes invalidate the LOTO procedure without realizing it. For instance, in an emergency, certain electrical systems may need to be rerouted to get a system functioning. Jury-rigging a system is a common cause of inadvertently bypassing a LOTO. I imagine jury-rigged systems are common on a warship.

IOW, it is just plain old unavoidable in some situations, in the face of the bigger picture.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Lock out proceures in Manitcore Ascendant..
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Fri Jul 16, 2021 9:34 pm

ThinksMarkedly
Fleet Admiral

Posts: 4105
Joined: Sat Aug 17, 2019 11:39 am

Quarthinos wrote:So I'm confused. On Earth, when an electrical component is locked out, it literally gets a padlock on the switch. I'm pretty sure everyone has their own padlock and key, so you can't remove the lockout easily. Yet on the HMS Vangaurd, when crew was on the hull to do work on a high-power system, the lock out was "inadvertently" bypassed, leading to a Dutchman and a spacer being sent permanently ground side because of psych trauma. And all that was going to happen is a refresher of procedures?!?

WHAT THE HELL?

If this is going to continue to happen, then I'm just going to put this book down and walk away, because that's serious BS.


It was probably an electronic lockout. With 2000 more years of technology development, physical padlocks have probably been obsoleted.

Like the Wi-Fi Kill buttons. On early laptops, you had a physical button that disabled the antenna, so it couldn't transmit. That way, it was safe to use laptops aboard aeroplanes. These days, you may have a key on the keyboard (my 2016 laptop still has, the 2021 doesn't), but it's all electronic and controlled by software.

Another similar development is networking. Networking has always been about wires taking from place A to place B. These days, massive infrastructures use Software-Defined Networking, which allows software to do the packet switching and thus allow nodes far apart in the physical world to have a much closer virtual network. What's not to say that the power systems aren't a similar thing?

In fact, the technology for electric switching controlled by software exists today. There's no need to open physical contacts to break a circuit: you can do it with semi-conductors. And besides, given that they were trying to replace devices whose purpose and functionality we have no idea about, who's to say how their electrical systems work?
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Re: Lock out proceures in Manitcore Ascendant..
Post by cthia   » Fri Jul 16, 2021 9:42 pm

cthia
Fleet Admiral

Posts: 14951
Joined: Thu Jan 23, 2014 1:10 pm

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
Quarthinos wrote:So I'm confused. On Earth, when an electrical component is locked out, it literally gets a padlock on the switch. I'm pretty sure everyone has their own padlock and key, so you can't remove the lockout easily. Yet on the HMS Vangaurd, when crew was on the hull to do work on a high-power system, the lock out was "inadvertently" bypassed, leading to a Dutchman and a spacer being sent permanently ground side because of psych trauma. And all that was going to happen is a refresher of procedures?!?

WHAT THE HELL?

If this is going to continue to happen, then I'm just going to put this book down and walk away, because that's serious BS.


It was probably an electronic lockout. With 2000 more years of technology development, physical padlocks have probably been obsoleted.

Like the Wi-Fi Kill buttons. On early laptops, you had a physical button that disabled the antenna, so it couldn't transmit. That way, it was safe to use laptops aboard aeroplanes. These days, you may have a key on the keyboard (my 2016 laptop still has, the 2021 doesn't), but it's all electronic and controlled by software.

Another similar development is networking. Networking has always been about wires taking from place A to place B. These days, massive infrastructures use Software-Defined Networking, which allows software to do the packet switching and thus allow nodes far apart in the physical world to have a much closer virtual network. What's not to say that the power systems aren't a similar thing?

In fact, the technology for electric switching controlled by software exists today. There's no need to open physical contacts to break a circuit: you can do it with semi-conductors. And besides, given that they were trying to replace devices whose purpose and functionality we have no idea about, who's to say how their electrical systems work?

You would think the LOTO has to be electronic. You wouldn't want to rely on padlocks and keys on the hull of the ship. Although, what happens to the process when there is no power to the LOTO is beyond me. Perhaps a fallback procedure.

At any rate, on a warship the system must be capable of being bypassed.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Lock out proceures in Manitcore Ascendant..
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Fri Jul 16, 2021 11:17 pm

ThinksMarkedly
Fleet Admiral

Posts: 4105
Joined: Sat Aug 17, 2019 11:39 am

cthia wrote:At any rate, on a warship the system must be capable of being bypassed.


Ah, good point too. And given the state of disrepair those ships were in, robbing Peter to pay Paul with equipment, you can expect that there were hacks upon hacks with the hardware and software. They were deathtraps.

So no surprise that the lockouts could be bypassed.
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Re: Lock out proceures in Manitcore Ascendant..
Post by MantiMerchie   » Sat Jul 17, 2021 12:26 pm

MantiMerchie
Ensign

Posts: 13
Joined: Wed Dec 05, 2018 10:08 pm

Quarthinos wrote: And all that was going to happen is a refresher of procedures?!?

WHAT THE HELL?

If this is going to continue to happen, then I'm just going to put this book down and walk away, because that's serious BS.


Navy jobs had a lot of political input. The officer who wrongly cleared it, or at least authorized the clearing might have family or friends in high place so can't be publicly punished. Claim need for a refresher and shuffle the officer to ground side for a year or so.

Sent from my LM-G710 using Tapatalk
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Re: Lock out proceures in Manitcore Ascendant..
Post by saber964   » Sat Jul 17, 2021 10:59 pm

saber964
Admiral

Posts: 2423
Joined: Thu Dec 13, 2012 8:41 pm
Location: Spokane WA USA

Quarthinos wrote:So I'm confused. On Earth, when an electrical component is locked out, it literally gets a padlock on the switch. I'm pretty sure everyone has their own padlock and key, so you can't remove the lockout easily. Yet on the HMS Vangaurd, when crew was on the hull to do work on a high-power system, the lock out was "inadvertently" bypassed, leading to a Dutchman and a spacer being sent permanently ground side because of psych trauma. And all that was going to happen is a refresher of procedures?!?

WHAT THE HELL?

If this is going to continue to happen, then I'm just going to put this book down and walk away, because that's serious BS.



Being former U.S. Navy. I've seen people violate LOTO procedures like you won't believe. From as simple as tearing the tag off and flipping the switch or flipping the switch with the tag hanging there. To working on live equipment with no LOTO done.
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Re: Lock out proceures in Manitcore Ascendant..
Post by Joat42   » Sun Jul 18, 2021 12:30 am

Joat42
Admiral

Posts: 2142
Joined: Tue Apr 16, 2013 7:01 am
Location: Sweden

saber964 wrote:
Quarthinos wrote:So I'm confused. On Earth, when an electrical component is locked out, it literally gets a padlock on the switch. I'm pretty sure everyone has their own padlock and key, so you can't remove the lockout easily. Yet on the HMS Vangaurd, when crew was on the hull to do work on a high-power system, the lock out was "inadvertently" bypassed, leading to a Dutchman and a spacer being sent permanently ground side because of psych trauma. And all that was going to happen is a refresher of procedures?!?

WHAT THE HELL?

If this is going to continue to happen, then I'm just going to put this book down and walk away, because that's serious BS.

Being former U.S. Navy. I've seen people violate LOTO procedures like you won't believe. From as simple as tearing the tag off and flipping the switch or flipping the switch with the tag hanging there. To working on live equipment with no LOTO done.

This happened in the 80's. I have a friend that worked as an electrician, he was physically flung through a closed metal door and landed a couple of meters away after some idiot turned on power even though the equivalent of LOTO-signs where put up. He had just started working on a high-voltage transformer system and where inserting a bar that was supposed to short if something untoward (shorts, idiots etc) would happen during maintenance, so it was halfway in and the resulting arc essentially exploded a part of the bar which blew up the cabinet and flung him away instead of just tripping the fuse. He got 3rd degree burns on the chest and lost an eye. Hitting the door he fractured a scapula, the clavicle, the pelvis and most of his ribs resulting in a collapsed lung. It took him almost 2 years of rehab and operations before he was able to work again.

Oh, the fuse actually "tripped" after a couple of 100's ms. By "tripped", I mean it exploded too but they are housed outside just for that reason. They started using padlocks and chains after that, to make sure no idiots could tamper with the lock-outs.

So people who ignore LOTO-signs needs a swift kick where it hurts, repeatedly, until they are unable to procreate.

---
Jack of all trades and destructive tinkerer.


Anyone who have simple solutions for complex problems is a fool.
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Re: Lock out proceures in Manitcore Ascendant..
Post by gclarkii   » Wed Jul 28, 2021 10:32 pm

gclarkii
Midshipman

Posts: 7
Joined: Sat Dec 30, 2017 3:26 am

Well the thing is that sometimes even with a "Lock Out" you can get into trouble.

I was a Navy Electronics Tech back in the 80's.
I was working on the power supply for an amplifier and had tagged and locked it down.
I had just finished bleeding all of the filter capacitors so I could start troubleshooting a noisy output, when I was called away(for the life of me I can't remember what it was) and was gone for about 2 hours. Some of you may know where this is going.. :)
In the normal course of events I should have been done within let's say 10 or 20 minutes and everything would have uneventful.
Well it looks like I was not paying attention and while I only used one hand(the other was holding the meter), I still managed to touch one cap with my left index finger and next thing I know I'm on my ass with pain shooting from that finger to my left elbow.
It seems during that two hours that the caps had recharged themselves to a decent level and I had shorted them by resting my elbow on the frame and touching one.
Spent a night in the hospital and to this day a strip of skin from my left index finger to the elbow is numb.

I'm just glad it was not the CRT from an old style TV or monitor as those can do the same thing with much more damage.
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Re: Lock out proceures in Manitcore Ascendant..
Post by cthia   » Thu Jul 29, 2021 8:29 am

cthia
Fleet Admiral

Posts: 14951
Joined: Thu Jan 23, 2014 1:10 pm

gclarkii wrote:Well the thing is that sometimes even with a "Lock Out" you can get into trouble.

I was a Navy Electronics Tech back in the 80's.
I was working on the power supply for an amplifier and had tagged and locked it down.
I had just finished bleeding all of the filter capacitors so I could start troubleshooting a noisy output, when I was called away(for the life of me I can't remember what it was) and was gone for about 2 hours. Some of you may know where this is going.. :)
In the normal course of events I should have been done within let's say 10 or 20 minutes and everything would have uneventful.
Well it looks like I was not paying attention and while I only used one hand(the other was holding the meter), I still managed to touch one cap with my left index finger and next thing I know I'm on my ass with pain shooting from that finger to my left elbow.
It seems during that two hours that the caps had recharged themselves to a decent level and I had shorted them by resting my elbow on the frame and touching one.
Spent a night in the hospital and to this day a strip of skin from my left index finger to the elbow is numb.

I'm just glad it was not the CRT from an old style TV or monitor as those can do the same thing with much more damage.

I was wrong about where you were going with that. I thought you were going to say that someone else finished the job and got what you got. One of the first things you learn in a LOTO procedure is that if you step away from it you must treat it as if the LOTO is no longer valid. You were supposed to do it all over again.

I can't believe it happened to you. You must know that capacitors have a mind of their own and they try to resist discharging. I had that argument with someone in another thread about the mains aboard ship which fire grasers. They argued with me that capacitors do not try to resist discharging. I finally looked it up. It is called dielectric absorption. Anyway, you were planning to be finished in a short while. Best laid plans of mice and men.

Sorry you got burned. Which is what you're taught. Don't get burned.

BTW, as far as the old CRTs, a lot of people were "incidentally" taught by those things. They were nothing but bombs. There was a standing joke that if you work on one you had to be a bomb specialist. Red, blue or green. Don't cross the wrong wire. LOL

I am sure a lot of people here in the forum have seen one explode in their lifetime when acted upon by an outside force. I guess it is only fitting that they are used in a lot of "tv" shows and movies as homemade bombs. Can we say MacGyver.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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