Joe Black

Currently working as part of a team of crane service engineers that cover a customer base that is nationwide working with a varied range of crane and hoist makes and models such as Kone, Street, Demag, Stahl and Verlinde.

Carrying out services such as crane and hoist maintenance and servicing to ensure that customers cranes work to there full potential and do not affect production, followed by a comprehensive report of any and all problems found to ensure that issues can be rectified and the crane is in a safe working condition.

Routine crane and loose lifting loler inspections on all below hook lifting equipment such as chains, slings shackles and more to ensure that all equipment being used is fit for purpose and to reduce the risk of accidents and injuries.

Providing a fast and effective crane breakdown and repairs, arriving at site to fault find and repair a crane or hoist using my ability to read electrical drawings and existing knowledge.

Crane and gantry and jib hoist installation, relocations and removals. Showing my skill of efficient and safe installation. Once the equipment has been erected a load test will be carried out ensuring crane is fit for purpose and safe to use.

Hoist changes and crane retrofitting and modernisation by converting cranes to radio remote control, the addition of directional limits and dead zones so that there are areas the crane will not reach.

I worked as part of a maintenance team that covered the steel rolling plant and gantry cranes. This was covered by both preventative maintenance and reactive breakdown and repairs.

This involved routine maintenance such as changing electrical contacts for roller motors and cellar pumps to ensure the best chance at production running smoothly, reactive breakdown and repairs to the furnace, steel rolling mill, steel coilers and gantry cranes so there was as little downtime for production as low as possible. Routine testing and inspecting of all motors and cables feeding them throughout the milling process for breaks in cable insulation and motor windings that are breaking down, this meant that problems such as this could be resolved before becoming a problem to production.

Working closely with other departments and writing out permits for both employees and any contractors that would be on site so that work can be carried out in a safe manner, this included proving equipment is isolated.

I served my apprenticeship in Electrical and Mechanical engineering while at Mollertech, an injection moulding company upon completing work experience provided as part of my college course. Upon completion this then turned into a full time position as a maintenance technician that covered site utilities such as compressed air, water and water chillers and nitrogen for the machine processes, being responsible for maintaining all of the injection moulding machines, robots and gantry cranes throughout the plant while on strict deadlines due to the nature of next day manufacturing that was in place.

Breakdowns were a huge part of the job as responses had to be as fast and effective as possible, requiring a good understanding of PLC control, safety and control circuits, robotic programming, the production process and both electrical and pneumatic drawings to aid in the fault finding process to enable production to get up and running again. Followed up by extensive reports to try to combat the issue occurring again and as something for other technicians to look back at to aid in there fault finding process.

While working at Mollertech I also became trained to edit and write programs for both robots and machines. This was used to write new programs for the machines to be able to create new processes for any new projects that came in.

I enrolled on the pathways to apprenticeship course that crosskeys college had on offer, this involved the first year of an apprenticeship and two weeks of work experience at Mollertech and upon completion of the college year I was offered one of the apprenticeships on offer.