Kemppi Supersnakes Weld Their Way Through Aircraft Carrier's Flight Deck

3rd November 2011
Posted By : ES Admin
Kemppi Supersnakes Weld Their Way Through Aircraft Carrier's Flight Deck
Established in 1824, Cammell Laird Shiprepairers and Shipbuilders Ltd, Birkenhead, has a long and proud history on the banks of the River Mersey including the building of RMS Mauretania in 1938 and HMS Ark Royal in 1936, an aircraft carrier of World War Two fame. As one walks through the gates to-day, the yard and shipbuilding has changed considerably but you still get a feel for its history and a huge abundance of new enthusiasm and pride from the top to the bottom. The yard specialises in commercial repair, conversion, heavy fabrication and military refit projects, then in 2010 shipbuilding returned, when Cammell Laird received a £44m contract to build two 12m. high sections of the middle and aft flight deck for HMS Queen Elizabeth, the new 65,000 tonnes aircraft carrier being built by the Aircraft Carrier Alliance for the Royal Navy.
To-day, Cammell Laird has 50,000m2 of covered fabrication and construction facilities, the largest of which is a 15,000m2 Construction Hall, which can support up to 300 coded welders per shift. Other facilties include 5 drydocks and an extensive wet basin as well as steel preparation, machining and pipework shops plus hardstanding areas.

It was for the carrier contract that Cammell Laird turned to their local Kemppi dealer, General Welding Supplies (NW) Ltd in Widnes, Cheshire and purchased 12 Kemppi Supersnake™ GT02S air cooled ultra long 25 m. welding systems for distance fire feeding and restricted access MIG/MAG welding and which are now playing an important role in the fabrication of the giant 800 tonnes sections.

Supersnake GT02S is available as either an air or water cooled system in lengths of 10m, 15m, 20m and 25m. Connected to Eur MIG welding guns it can provide a maximum 30m. gun reach from the wire feed unit. It provides a deck based or boom deleivery wire feed system, feeding a range of filler wires including ferrous, stainless and aluminium wires. The longest and heaviest 25m water cooled version weighs only 37kg.

Jeff Jones, Structures Manager at Cammell Laird, whose Father and Grandfather worked in the yard before him, said: ”We are just over 50% of the way through the steel work on the carrier project. The fabrications are quite complex from a welding point of view in the welding processes and different grades of materials we use. When completed the two sections will be sent by barge to Rosyth where they will be welded into the hull to form the ship.

We have a very good, long standing relationship with General Welding and from whom we receive a lot of support. When we were awarded the Carrier contract we ordered 30 x Kemppi FastMig™ Synergic 400A welding machines and they are used for MIG/MAG and MMA welding in the Construction Hall. It was at this time that Ian Morgan from General Welding introduced me to Supersnake™ and to the the benefits it could offer. We decided to trial one on the Nexans Skagerrak Mid Body extension project we were undertaking at the time. We gave a number of welders the opportunity to use it and the feedback we got was all very positive.

The complexity of the carrier section is such that we acquired 12 Supersnake GT02S units. It is a bit of a rabbit warren on board and the welders can be welding all over the place. We find the 30m. reach of Supersnake used with the FastMIG™ Synergic 350A welding machines opens up all areas for access and with its flexibilty it can easily be threaded through hatchways, holes and gaps in the fabrication to where the welders are working. At the end of each job the welder can just move to the next taking his torch and hose with him. The other good point is that we can trail the hose vertically up through four decks to the top leaving the power source below, thereby eliminating the need to carry wire feed units to the point of welding, plus the welders do not have to arrange cranage and this saves a tremendous amount of man hours and effort.

We purchased these units over a year ago now and in that time they have been very reliable and are well used, so overall we now are doing more welding much faster and more economically than without Supersnake.

We are mainly using 1.2mm flux cored wire, sometimes 1.4mm, with Supersnake and both wires are very easy to feed through. This state of the art equipment has definitely helped reduce our production times and costs as well as helping us in the way we carrying out welding on board.”

Mike Pixley, Managing Director Kemppi UK Ltd said: ”Supersnake was designed for complex fabrications with difficult access and fabricators who are using Supersnake have all found cost and man hour savings. Because a welder uses a standard welding gun on the end of Supersnake™, the welder has no additional weight or strain in addition to the gun and he also has the freeedom to weld over a large area. Kemppi’s GT WireDrive™ mechanism and patented low friction DL-teflon make it easy to push a filler wire through the feed length, whilst the bright orange composite material cable set is highly visible for workplace safety and durability. The welder can easily adjust the welding parameters at the point of welding using a single knob control and read his data on a clear display. These points all help to make this an ideal tool for shipyards.”

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