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Crawler moving into penstock for inspection. (click to enlarge)

In this job a crawling vehicle was used to internally examine 3 separate steel penstocks. The penstocks were at too great an angle to safely conduct an internal walking inspection without additional fall protection and rescue provisions allowing the crawler method of inspection to provide the customer with significant cost savings. The crawler entered each 750 foot penstock from the surge shaft onsite, and performed a visual inspection of each riveted joint in the pipe using a 360° rotating, color zoom camera. Each penstock was inspected for visual defects, and several structures of interest not shown on the as built drawings were found.

Additionally, the crawler camera was mounted on a separate chassis allowing for a complete visual inspection of the dewatered intake structure where there was a known issue. The crawler camera was able to identify the location of this issue as well as additional piping not previously known to the customer. The ability for Hibbard Inshore to do this inspection remotely was important to the customer because the intake structure had aged to the point where a man inspection would not have been safe without significant rescue resources on hand.

Click on the images below for a closer view.

Crawler in steel pipe video capture.	Intake shaft vertical inspection with camera on skid.