Equipment and Intellectual Property
Icthus Marine develops concepts for increased safety, efficiency, and/or reduced costs or damages in the shipping industry, be it for own Intellectual Property or as a service for others.
Philip Bacon developed lifting equipment for awkward cargoes for his employers, equipment for cargo damage reduction on passage, including a manifold for maintaining cargo-bracing airbag pressure on long passages, and pliable dunnage disks for paper carried in breakbulk.
New items for the tanker and dry bulk industry are in prototype stage and will be brought to market in due course.
Philip Bacon holds the world-wide patent to a singular array for Container Gantry cranes from the priority date of January 1997.
The Patent EP0952955 relating to a high-productivity (multi-lift) Gantry Crane was extended to a WPO application (WO1998030485). Patents were granted in the USA, China, Hong Kong, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and other countries.
See on Patentscope site, NB figure 7 for Shipping Container use
SYNOPSIS
Philip Bacon, when working in the Container industry, had the insight that the speed limit on the loading or unloading process could be raised enormously if a single crane could have two or more lifting tackles operating simultaneously and preferably independently of one another into the same container bay onboard the vessel.
This would have the same effect as if two or more cranes were working in the same location, and could be expected to multiply the speed of the process in accordance with the number of tackles used - so long as the Container Yard could feed or take away at that rate.
In order to operate two or more tackles along the same gantry in order to emulate two or more cranes working in the same location, it is essential that the tackles and their loads or lifts should be able to pass clear of each other at all times, for which several configurations were proposed in the Patent however the most effective is expected to be the "one inside the other" as illustrated. The necessary collision-avoidance measures are part of the Patent granted.
