MAN B&W—Hamburg service center
As a vibrant element of the city port's industrial infrastructure, the extremely versatile MAN B&W Service Center in Hamburg plays a key role in supporting the huge population of own brand machinery while repairing and servicing a wide range of other marques and equipment.
The premises at the Rosshafen Terminal in the inner dock estate provide alongside berthing for ships up to 90,000 dwt and embrace a large-scale manufacturing capability which extends beyond engine components, spares and crankshafts to a range of precision and specialized engineering tasks.
The operating remit of Service Center Werk Hamburg thereby includes repairs, overhaul and modernization of MAN B&W engines and other makes, spare parts production, supply and depot function, engine parts exchange and reconditioning, turbocharger service, and boiler and turbine plant repairs. Such is the remarkable diversity of the undertaking that it includes a materials testing and research laboratory, and around-the-clock troubleshooter service, while also acting as a general contractor for hull work and other shipboard jobs.
Equipped with a whole array of specialized machine tools and accredited facilities, the company propounds powerful arguments for having repairs to highly stressed engine components performed exclusively by the engine maker or licenser. For instance, its in-situ repairs of crankshafts, including shrink-fitting of new throws, repositioning of webs and grinding of crankshafts, is based on the designer's quality criteria and decades of experience in crankshaft manufacture.
The Service Center employs high-grade and component-compatible materials as part of its welding technology in reconditioning the exhaust valves of advanced two-stroke engines operating at high ignition pressures.
Dependable and safe engine operation is allied to proper account being accorded to applicable load factors. It abhors the practice sometimes employed in the industry to use filler pieces in the repair of combustion system components, with the aim of saving costs or out of ignorance of the working loads imposed on such parts.
As part of the original design and licenser group, the Hamburg enterprise claims that it is far better placed to carry out extensive and intricate procedures such as heat treatment to cast steel or forged steel cylinder covers following major welding repairs.
Innovative reconditioning processes, including long-term component protection against both hot corrosion and dew point corrosion, are offered by the Service Center.
This is particularly salient to exhaust valve housing, wherein gas channel walls are susceptible to aggressive exhaust gases and temperatures below the dew point. Indicative of the shipboard plant modernization scope of the Hamburg works, worn piston rods of long-serving GF and GB-type engines can be hardened and ground to an undersize dimension and the stuffing boxes upgraded to the latest design status of the current generation of MAN B&W MCseries two-stroke diesels.
The in-house materials and testing laboratory not only supports the MAN B&W service operations, but also handles a great variety of orders placed by outside firms. It undertakes technological and metallographic tests, chemical and non-destructive tests, damage analysis, general linear measuring technology, and balancing operations and provides a material advisory service.
Ongoing research into repair procedures is reflected in the level of service it provides. For example, it advocates the repair of the seatings of the exhaust valve housings in four-stroke engine cylinder covers by a special method.
This entails a defined and temperature- controlled, circular, semiautomatic welding procedure, using alloy-optimized weld metals. It categorically dismisses local welding as a recipe for a recurrence of damage
