During scheduled plant or facility shutdowns, many items need to be shut down and locked off before any scheduled maintenance can be performed. Managing the extremely large volume of padlocks required to lock off these items can prove to be a very difficult challenge. At the request of a customer, Blue Diamond Equipment Innovations was asked to fabricate a 10” diameter ring made using 3/8” diameter stainless steel rod. Each 10” ring made was to have its own identification tag. This tag was made of 1/8” thick aluminum with stamped letters and numbers on it along with a ¼” diameter hole drilled on one end of the tag. The tag was then attached to the 10” ring using a 3/16” rectangular shaped stainless steel chain link that was cut open to allow the tag and ring to be joined together before the chain link is welded back together. This type of tag and using the chain link to join everything together made it virtually impossible to lose the identification tag from the ring. These rings with tags were then used to handle up to 20 padlocks each. The rings with padlocks were then handed out to individual contractors who were involved with the shutdown work. Individual ring and padlock identification numbers could then be recorded and this information could be used if there were any issues with a padlock used or if a ring or group of padlocks was misplaced. This padlock management system could handle large numbers of padlocks and keep them very well organized.
The padlock ring storage rack was developed to store numerous padlock rings with padlocks. Each rack can handle up to 36 rings along with up to 720 padlocks. These storage racks are placed within a Greenlee job box which then creates a storage area for these padlocks that is out of the weather elements when the padlocks are not in use. The Greenlee job box can then be placed on a concrete pad or platform close to where majority of the padlocks would be needed. These Geenlee job boxes full of padlock filled rings could then be distributed throughout a plant or facility to be ready for use when needed and not cause a single area to be over run with contractors trying to obtain the padlocks they require before they can begin their shutdown work. Distribution of these padlocks by plant or facility personnel to contractors could then be done quickly without contractors having to deal with long wait times to get the lock out padlocks they need.
All padlock ring storage stand hanging rods have rounded ends on the storage pegs to prevent accidental injury when removing or placing on the rings with padlocks onto the stand. Each storage stand has a safety yellow powder coat finish.
