The hull of Ocean Diamond Mining’s (ODM’s) new
61-m-long vessel has been widened in just 17 days by Western Cape
mechanical engineer and manufacturer Belmet.
MD Pieter Kroon tells Mining Weekly that this was accomplished by
prefabricating the 85 t of steelwork at the company’s
Bellville premises, where it has 1 970 m2 of undercover
manufacturing facility.
Using a Canadian three-dimensional (3D) software ptrack mounted impact crusher price usedackage called
Autoship, the company redrew the basic line-plan of primary
contractor Triton Naval Architects, and developed the plates concrete sand production equipmentusing
an add-on package called Autoplex, which is linked to various 3D
computer-aided design stations for design, shop detailing and
computer-nubuilding a mobile screen or crushermeric control (CNC) programming.
CNC cutting of the plates was done on a 3-m-by-13-m table with
air-plasma and flame profiling.
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Welding, which accounts for 0,4% of the total weight of the new
deck, was done by gas-assisted flux-core welding.
Eight modules, four for each side of the ship, weighing 10 t to 15
t each, and with a total length of 55 m, were fabricated in this
way from grade 300 WA steel supplied by Transcape Steels.
The eight modules were transported to Cape Town harbour’s
Sturrock Dock, where ODM’s new diamond-mining vessel was
dry-docked for 17 days, and the eight modules were assembled to
make the hull 1,75 m wider on each side for stability and
additional buoyancy, and to make fuel spaces and voids.
On site, Belmet employed a workforce of 18 – mainly welders
and boilermakers – who welded and faired the new hull into
the existing hull.
Kroon believes Belmet is the only company in South Africa which
uses this welding technique for shipbuilding, which is similar to a
production weld where Mig welding is used.