Your full-service provider on call!

From the out­side, it looks like just a nor­mal truck. But behind the scenes it con­tains every­thing need­ed to ser­vice or repair tap chang­ers. The new ser­vice truck even has reserve load­ing space for motor-dri­ve units, bush­ings, oil fil­ter units, or MESSKO® prod­ucts should these need to be retro­fit­ted or replaced dur­ing main­te­nance. Anoth­er high­light is a crane for lift­ing out the tap-chang­er inserts.

A ser­vice deploy­ment can last up to two weeks at a time if the two-per­son ser­vice team car­ries out up to ten tap chang­er ser­vice jobs on a sin­gle tour. “The ser­vice we offer with our new truck is a tru­ly all-inclu­sive pack­age. In addi­tion to the advan­tage of low­er costs, our cus­tomers can also reduce the has­sle of main­te­nance,” explains ser­vice engi­neer Chris­t­ian Schaider, who spear­head­ed the devel­op­ment of the truck in coop­er­a­tion with the head of ser­vice tech­ni­cians, Markus Rap­pl. Pre­vi­ous­ly, the ser­vice spe­cial­ists would nor­mal­ly trav­el out in a reg­u­lar car.

All-inclu­sive: The truck fea­tures a ful­ly equipped work­shop … (© Bern­hard Huber)

… and enough stor­age space for spare parts and main­te­nance equip­ment. (© Bern­hard Huber)

The replace­ment parts need­ed for main­te­nance which couldn’t fit into the vehi­cle were there­fore deliv­ered direct­ly to the customer’s cen­tral ware­house. The cus­tomer would then have to make sure that the parts, along with the crane, the replace­ment oil, and any aux­il­iary per­son­nel, were avail­able at the rel­e­vant pri­ma­ry sub­sta­tion site on the sched­uled ser­vic­ing date. “But today we can relieve cus­tomers of this respon­si­bil­i­ty and offer a much more con­ve­nient ser­vice because, after we receive an order, all we need to do is agree on the date for the ser­vic­ing. All the spare parts and equip­ment need­ed for main­te­nance are brought along with us in our ser­vice truck,” adds Mr. Schaider.

“We even cre­ate the quo­ta­tions our­selves for these jobs, with­out the cus­tomer hav­ing to go through the effort, and with­out us need­ing to be on site before­hand. Only three pieces of infor­ma­tion are required – the ser­i­al num­ber, the cur­rent num­ber of tap-change oper­a­tions reg­is­tered by the oper­a­tions counter, and the site of the trans­former in which the tap chang­er that requires ser­vic­ing is inte­grat­ed. Because we record all data in our sys­tem from the point of deliv­ery of the tap chang­er onwards, our ser­vice engi­neers are famil­iar with the entire ‚life his­to­ry’ of the prod­uct.”

More than meets the eye

Whether it’s needed for servicing or repair work, the truck has everything on board:

MOBILE WORKSHOP

The front sec­tion of the artic­u­lat­ed trail­er is used as a work­shop, office, and spare parts stor­age space. There are also two oil analy­sis units avail­able for mea­sur­ing dielec­tric strength and water con­tent.

TOWING VEHICLE

There are numer­ous fea­tures in the tow­ing vehi­cle alone. For instance, in order to make the most out of the space avail­able, the sleep­ing area of the driver’s cab was con­vert­ed to stowage space for the toolk­its. The vehi­cle even includes a water tank with a soap dis­penser.

SECURE OIL DRUMS

2,000 kilo­grams of insu­lat­ing oil can be loaded into the truck. This is enough to change the oil in about ten stan­dard tap chang­ers. In order to meet strict envi­ron­men­tal stan­dards, the oil drums are housed in spe­cial, trans­port-friend­ly con­tain­ers.

SAMPLE TAKING KIT

Both cas­es con­tain every­thing need­ed to pro­fes­sion­al­ly car­ry out oil sam­pling. Togeth­er with the mea­sur­ing device, this includes the ster­ile oil con­tain­ers with­out which the analy­sis results could be inac­cu­rate if impu­ri­ties are present.

THE CRANE

The piv­ot­ing crane can be extend­ed out to a radius of twelve meters and car­ry loads of up to 300 kilo­grams. It can be used to lift up on-load tap-chang­er inserts and move around oil drums.

LIFE-SAVER

If the crane gets too close to an over­head pow­er line, a flashover can pose a dan­ger to ser­vice spe­cial­ists. The 15-meter ground­ing cable there­fore trans­fers the cur­rent from the crane to the bus­bar, which is also used to ground the trans­former.

GRIPPER AND STANDPIPES

The grip­per in the mid­dle can be used by the ser­vice tech­ni­cian to clean the oil com­part­ment in which the on-load tap-chang­er insert is fit­ted. This is flanked by two stand­pipes which ensure that the oil is pumped out of the drums down to the last drop.

PUMP AND HOSES

The oil pump is a spe­cial con­struc­tion with a col­lect­ing basin. Dur­ing an oil change, it pumps the used oil out and pumps fresh oil back in. The hoses in front of the pump can be fit­ted togeth­er to the desired length.

LOADING AIDS

Using the drum grip­pers, the crane can haul the oil drums into and out of the con­tain­ers.

MOBILE CRANE

If the crane on the ser­vice truck can­not access a trans­former because it’s inside a build­ing, the ser­vice spe­cial­ists can assem­ble a lift­ing aid from these com­po­nents that can attach to the trans­former and act as a crane.

USEFUL BOXES

These box­es con­tain lots of use­ful equip­ment for main­te­nance, includ­ing drills and cord­less screw­drivers, lift­ing equip­ment, exten­sion cables, sand­pa­per, a chain block for the lift­ing device, and many oth­er tools.

EMERGENCY BOX

If it becomes appar­ent dur­ing a ser­vice job that more com­po­nents are defec­tive than was pre­vi­ous­ly thought, this box con­tains impor­tant spare parts. If this box were not includ­ed, the spe­cial­ists would have to come back a sec­ond time with the extra parts.

GREATER CONVENIENCE FOR CUSTOMERS

The spe­cial­ists from Regens­burg, under the lead­er­ship of Chris­t­ian Schaider and Markus Rap­pl, have been work­ing on the truck for two years. The devel­op­ment team ini­tial­ly con­sid­ered a trail­er-based con­cept with a car as the tow­ing vehi­cle. “It quick­ly became clear, how­ev­er, that this con­cept would have been too lim­it­ed in terms of load­ing and crane struc­ture. And when we added an inte­grat­ed work­shop to our wish list, we scrapped the idea in favor of a truck-based con­cept,” Mr. Schaider recalls.

The plan­ning for the struc­ture, the crane and the inte­ri­or fit­tings, tak­ing into account all require­ments, such as the manda­to­ry trip recorder, load restraints, or the fas­ten­ing of oper­at­ing mate­ri­als, was car­ried out inde­pen­dent­ly by the Rein­hausen ser­vice engi­neers. For the tow­ing vehi­cle, they decid­ed on a 250-horse­pow­er stan­dard design from MAN. The con­ver­sions required for the crane struc­ture and the trail­er were out­sourced to a spe­cial­ist in Regens­burg.

FULL SERVICE WITH 250 HP

When cus­tomers today decide to order the full ser­vice from MR, they need only open the pri­ma­ry sub­sta­tion and free up the trans­former on the agreed date. Because the truck is loaded specif­i­cal­ly for each indi­vid­ual job, main­te­nance work can be com­bined cost-effi­cient­ly with repairs, for exam­ple replace­ment of bush­ings with retro­fitting of dis­play instru­ments from Reinhausen’s sub­sidiary MESSKO®, with a TAPSCAN® VAM vibroa­coustic mea­sure­ment, or with a dynam­ic TAPSCAN® DRM resis­tance mea­sure­ment. The ser­vice truck now car­ries out ser­vice jobs through­out Ger­many and Aus­tria. “It won’t always stay like this though,” adds Mr. Schaider, “we are work­ing every day to improve and expand our ser­vice around the world so that we can offer the full-ser­vice pack­age every­where.”

YOUR CONTACT

Want to know more about this new ser­vice?

Chris­t­ian Schaider is here to help:
c.schaider@reinhausen.com