Torsional Coupling News

AME is a Florida based engineering services company specializing in marine (Advanced Mechanical Enterprises) and industrial (Advanced Maintenance Engineering) predictive, preventative and corrective maintenance for rotating and reciprocating machinery. Founded by Rich Merhige in 1992, AME has pioneered the use of technologies and equipment to perform diagnostics, maintenance and repair, particularly for private and commercial vessels. As AME celebrates its 25th anniversary, discuss the decision to start the company.

San Francisco’s Jensen-designed super pumping fireboat is like none that came before her. As a result, the City by the Bay is prepared like never before, for its next crisis. Christened on October 17, appropriately enough on the anniversary of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, the city of San Francisco’s first new fireboat in almost 60 years is an especially unique boat, designed and built for a specific purpose. When the infamous quake burst the domestic water lines beneath San Francisco, it left local firefighters scrambling for a water source from which they could fight the fires that ensued. Today, Fireboat 3 – named locally by a young grade school student as the St.

Vigor recently delivered an 88’ x 25’ x 14’ fireboat to the San Francisco Fire Department. The yet to be named vessel is the first fireboat to join San Francisco’s fleet in 61 years. Designed by Jensen Maritime and built at Vigor’s Seattle shipyard, the unique vessel is not only a firefighting tool but also a mobile pumping station powerhouse, the shipbuilder said. It’s capable of pumping millions of gallons of water directly from the Bay into the City’s Auxiliary Water System – a feature that will keep fire hoses flowing in the event an earthquake damages San Francisco’s water mains.

The management teams of CENTA Antriebe Kirschey GmbH and Christie & Grey Limited announce a strategic global sales cooperation between their companies. The agreement allows the two companies to join forces to engineer and strategically supply the industry’s premium “quiet drive” solutions - combining soft mounting systems, flexible couplings, and intermediate drive shaft systems. As a pioneer in innovation since 1914, Christie & Grey Limited manufactures durable and highly efficient vibration, noise, and shock control solutions for worldwide marine, industrial, and commercial applications. For over 100 years, Christie & Grey has been a leader in designing and building engineered and customized solutions.

The management teams of CENTA Antriebe Kirschey GmbH and Christie & Grey Limited have announced a strategic global sales cooperation. The agreement allows the two companies to join forces to engineer and strategically supply “quiet drive” solutions - combining soft mounting systems, flexible couplings, and intermediate drive shaft systems. Christie & Grey Limited manufactures engineered and customized vibration, noise and shock control solutions for worldwide marine, industrial, and commercial applications, while CENTA Antriebe manufactures torsional coupling and drive shaft systems, offering solutions to the marine, industrial, rail, and energy industries.

VULKAN Couplings recently introduced a unique combination of the proven RATO DS coupling with a directly connected Composite shaft. The high radial stiffness and the comparably low axial and bending stiffness makes the RATO DS suitable to work not only as a torsional coupling but also as an integrated misalignment coupling when rigidly connected to an intermediate shaft. At the rear end of the intermediate shaft a torsionally stiff misalignment coupling creates the second bending flexible pivot thus providing a double cardanic design.

The term "Quiet Vessel" evokes images of stealthy nuclear submarines such as the Seawolf or the new Virginia Class. You may even think of the super-secret Sea Shadow, a radar evading surface vessel designed and built by the makers of the stealth fighter and stealth bomber, the Lockheed "Skunk-Works". However, you would probably not relate the term, "Quiet Vessel", to a new pair of Station Pilot-Boats built for the San Francisco Bar Pilots, a Voith-Schiedner Tractor Tug or a new Ferry for the Alaska Marine Highway System. Whereas the Seawolf and Sea Shadow were designed to be quiet underwater, the Pilotboat, tugboat and ferry were simply designed to be quiet for their occupants.

The only logical reason the sustained high price per barrel of oil has not already been dubbed "OIL BOOM 2000" is the fact that hindsight is 20/20. Companies that operate, build and supply vessels for the fickle oil patch have seen schizophrenic markets of days past bring industry goliaths to their knees. There remains a reserve among Gulf of Mexico area companies regarding prospects 2000 and beyond, but there is a growing feeling the business - which has largely been dismal since the end of 1997 - is set to embark on one of those notorious end runs that will fill area yards with healthy backlogs for years. The reason for the "look before you leap" attitude is also largely rooted in changing business dynamics which have effectively altered the way in which the world does business.