Laser System News

The U.S. Navy has long valued the potential of additive manufacturing (AM) and 3D Printing.AM refers to the depositing of material layer by layer to create an object. For the Navy, it’s not practical to carry every replacement part for every system on a ship, and it can be difficult to forecast if or when parts will fail. AM provides a flexible source of supply in being able to make parts instead of ordering them and waiting for them to arrive, especially for warships at the far end of the supply chain.

German construction and machinery manufacturing firm Bauer Spezialtiefbau has tested onshore piles at the Saint-Brieuc offshore wind project in France to gather data for the design of foundations.The engineering outfit  designed, installed and tested a total of 14 drilled and grouted piles at the Routin Quarry near Cap Fréhel, Brittany, under a contract signed with project developer Ailes Marines last year.“The aim of the onshore tests was to obtain important friction values for the foundation of the planned offshore wind farm,” explained Paul Scheller, head of Underwater Foundations at Bauer Spezialtiefbau.“This will be the first commercial application for this type of piles worldwide.

If you operate a vessel, its machinery, without a doubt, will require alignment many times during the course if its life. When misalignment is present components will be worn, efficiency will be lost, and, if left uncorrected, mechanical failures are imminent. This translates into a strain on mechanical systems, your budget, and your peace of mind. When speaking of alignment in marine applications, it is usually shaft alignment that is being referenced. Shaft alignment is defined as the positioning of two or more machines which so that at the point of power transfer from one shaft to another…

Mooring of large vessels in the LNG, petrochemical and container sectors is an intricate and critical procedure. The process entails bringing together a moving object with a static object, and with the imminent advent of even larger vessels (liquefied natural gas tankers with a capacity of 200,000 cubic meters and container ships with a capacity of 22,000 TEU*), the forces involved are enormous. For tankers and bulk carriers, mooring frequently takes place alongside jetties at the end of finger piers…

Trelleborg Marine Systems, a manufacturer of docking, mooring and berthing equipment, has received patent pending status on a system for monitoring the load on marine fenders. The new system is designed to help avoid disputes and the costly downtime associated with insurance claims. The marine fender load-monitoring system can be used to measure both the impact on fenders when a vessel berths, and the ongoing force applied as the vessel continues to bear against them while docked. “The data collected by this system could prove to be invaluable to ports and harbors all over the world in avoiding disputes and the costly downtime associated with insurance claims,” said Trelleborg Marine System’s Technical Director, Scott Smith.

Northrop Grumman announced that it recently completed a series of tests of the Maritime Laser Demonstration (MLD) system, moving high-energy lasers a step closer to deployment aboard U.S. Navy ships. According to the company, shore-based tests at the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) in Port Hueneme proved the MLD system's ability to track small boats at long ranges and in a marine environment. "Tracking tests were part of a larger program designed to demonstrate laser weapon system capability for fleet defense," according to Steve Hixson, vice president of Space and Directed Energy Systems for Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems. Managed by the Office of Naval Research (ONR)…

Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute received a $2m grant from the U.S. Navy to develop a robotic laser system to identify mines and other threats in ports and coastal waters. The system to be developed at Harbor Branch would involve a group of underwater robots scanning the water with laser beams and sending information to shore or to a ship above. According to project leader Fraser Dalgleish, an assistant research professor at Harbor Branch, the technology would allow images of much larger areas of the ocean than are now possible.

For years, general manufacturing companies have enjoyed the benefit of laser cutting systems for producing complex or simple parts in batch volumes as low as one, and as high as tens of thousands. The laser is an incredibly powerful tool that remains unsurpassed in manufacturing activities across the world. As flexible and reconfigurable production tool that provides welding, cutting and machining capabilities in a single device, lasers are readily automated and have demonstrated that they can easily operate in "lights-out" mode for even greater productivity. With all this said, why aren't there any laser shipyards? Why hasn't one of the worlds largest and most important transportation industries rushed to implement laser cutting and welding technology?

Advances in steel processing have enabled shipyards around the globe to streamline operations while vastly improving efficiency and quality. This fact is not lost on the shipyards of the Gulf of Mexico region, which in recent years have invested tens of millions of dollars in advanced systems designed to propel their yards into world class levels of quality and efficiency. Bender Shipbuilding’s transformation from a so-called “second tier” shipyard into a world-class facility is hinged on the success of its newly opened First Operations Shop. The new facility, which features the installation of a high powered laser cutting machine, will include operations such as raw plate and profile receipt and storage…

Worldwide, the road to success in the ship and boatbuilding market is literally paved with companies that have gone belly up, been acquired or are currently hanging by a literal thread. Many factors -- from too many booms and busts, to foreign shipbuilding subsidies, to political power plays - have conspired to make the business of building boats and ships increasingly difficult. But in the end analysis, the process of building vessels remains an industrialized manufacturing process, and the companies that have survived and prospered are the ones that have invested in the latest technologies to make the process more efficient. Improved steel processing - from cutting through parts marking to final installation - more so than ever determine a yard's marketability…

Worldwide, the road to success in the ship and boatbuilding market is literally paved with companies that have gone belly up, been acquired or are currently hanging by a literal thread. Many factors - from too many booms and busts, to foreign shipbuilding subsidies, to political power plays - have conspired to make the business of building boats and ships increasingly difficult. But in the end analysis, the process of building vessels remains an industrialized manufacturing process, and the companies that have survived and prospered are the ones that have invested in the latest technologies to make the process more efficient. Improved steel processing - from cutting through parts marking to final installation - more so than ever determine a yard's marketability…