Production gets energised

These are good times for those involved in the UK energy sector. Demand is high, prices are high and, arguably, future expectation is even higher. In the past two months alone, Statoil has announced investment worth £4 billion into UK oil and gas reserves. Indeed, according to trade association Oil & Gas UK, 'Mariner' is the largest offshore development in the UK for a decade, and requires pioneering technology and hundreds of highly skilled, long-lasting jobs. The news followed just a week after Dana Petroleum announced a similar investment and just two weeks after the Secretary of State for Energy Ed Davey gave his consent for UK shale gas exploration. From a nuclear perspective, it was revealed in December that the design of the first UK nuclear power station to be built for 25 years has now been granted approval, while renewables continue their rapid progress unabated: aside from wind power, in January the Crown Estate announced it will invest up to £20 million in two wave or tidal energy projects. SUPPLY CHAIN BENEFITS? While these high-level business deals make great headlines, the million dollar question is whether any value is trickling down the supply chain to the UK's machining community? Well, it's certain that many are reporting impressive levels of activity, such as Merseyside-based Spromak, for example. Spromak recently wanted to cut down on the machining time and production movement of some very large flanges and branch fittings for the oil and gas sector. The company opted for an Integrex e-800V II from Yamazaki Mazak (01905 755755) as a 'done-in-one' solution. Spromak now has 14 Mazak machines in total that help manufacture its range of branch connections for pipelines and pipeline products in the oil, gas and petrochemical industries. In fact, the company has recently won a £5 million contract to supply equipment to Chevron for its new liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant at Barrow Island, Australia. Typical materials machined at Spromak include stainless steel, duplex steels, Inconel 625 and titanium. However, as the company's range of reinforced branch fittings and flanged fittings, known as O'lets, have gradually increased in size, production movement at the Huyton factory has become a growing problem. For example, an insert branch outlet could weigh as much as 142 kg and require a series of machining operations, including turning, milling and boring, explains Spromak. "We wanted to be able to bring the product off completely finished," explains Paul Sproson, managing director. "However, with our products you can't just buy a machine and set it to work straight away. We work with Mazak and our CAM software vendors to identify the optimum machining solution. After a lot of hard work, we identified the Integrex e-800V." The machine is a 5-axis multi-tasking machine with a pallet size of 500 by 500 mm and a main table that can turn large diameter workpieces with a rapid traverse rate up to 50 m/min. "We are using the new machine on workpieces up to 730 mm and 980 mm high," confirms Mr Sproson. "Crucially, the Integrex has enabled us to cut cycle times by 6-8 hours, which, on average, represents around 50%." From a subcontract machining perspective, a popular option is often the provision of manufacturing cells dedicated to specific customers. It was with this exact strategy in mind that Plymouth-based Morris Engineering invested in four new Doosan twin-pallet VC430 vertical machining centres with integrated 4th-axis units supplied as a turnkey solution by Mills CNC (01926 736736). The machines (pictured) have been configured to create a dedicated manufacturing cell producing 'families' of oil and gas industry manifolds in medium-sized batches from 316 stainless steel. As a result, Morris Engineering has not only been able to consolidate its preferred partner status with this particular oil and gas customer, whose business accounts for over 30% of current turnover, but has also led to new contracts being secured with the customer. The machines are equipped with 18.5 kW, 12,000 rpm spindles, 30-position BT40 toolchangers and two 650 by 450 mm tables, which were supplied with integrated Lehmann 4th-axis units (Avon CNC Services, 0560 1766265) and Renishaw tool probes (01453 524524). By configuring the four machines in pairs, single piece flow has been achieved. SIZE MATTERS IN THIS SECTOR It's fair to say that size certainly matters when it comes to oil and gas components, as Sheffield-based X-Cel Superturn can confirm, following its recent decision to invest in a Hankook Protec 9NC flat bed lathe and a Hankook VTC140/E vertical turning and boring centre – both supplied by TW Ward CNC Machinery (0114 276 5411). With a bed length of 5 m and a maximum turning length capacity of 3.8 m, the Protec 9NC has been installed to machine predominantly steel and exotic alloy components for down-hole tools used in the oil industry. These vary in size, often up to 6 m long and 3 tonnes in weight, and are produced in batches up to 10-off. The Hankook VTC140/E vertical turning and boring centre is currently being used to machine, in a single set-up, a variety of sub-sea oil seals on its 1,400 mm diameter table. With C-axis indexing at 0.001° and an 18.5 kW milling spindle motor, plus a maximum turning diameter and height of 1,600 and 1,400 mm respectively, the machine has 24 tool stations, 12 each for turning and milling. The cross rail has 700 mm of vertical travel. The machine's ability to turn, drill and tap the seals in one-hit (the seals measure up to 3 m in diameter and can weigh 1.5 tonnes) has superseded the traditional process of flat-bed turning before being transferred to another machine for drilling and tapping. X-Cel has, in fact, recently established a new facility at the Advanced Manufacturing Park (AMP) in Sheffield, which was opened in response to a £6 million, three-year contract to supply precision gaskets and sealing rings to a manufacturer of sub-sea 'trees', with the equipment being used to 'top' underwater wellheads and control the flow of oil/gas. Sub-sea applications are also at the heart of a solution devised by a combination of deep hole drilling expertise from Mollart Engineering (0208 391 2282) and the flexibility gained from the single cycle capability of five Mazak turn-mill centres installed at its Resolven, south Wales, subcontract machining facility. The success of the project has led to a long-term contract for a family of manifolds, the most complex of which contains some 50 different features. Machined from stainless steel bar 350 mm diameter by 560 mm finished length, the manifold is completed in a single machining cycle. The component has four 8 mm diameter holes which are gun-drilled using Botek tooling through the entire length. A total of 27 threaded porting holes on one face each feature critical metal-to-metal conical sealing diameters and compound angled feed-holes that are also gun-drilled in-cycle. In addition, there is a variety of 36 different cross-holes, some drilled and others threaded, which are positioned on both side faces of the component. So complex is the machining cycle that a Mazak Integrex has to apply some 100 tools, but gives the advantage of single setting to maintain strict geometrical relationships. "Each of these manifolds takes around 40 hours to process, which is a major saving on lead time and cycle time against separate operations," states Wayne Thomas, the facility's director. He follows on to explain how the intricacy of the part with so many inter-connecting holes demanded investment in four seats of SolidWorks SolidCAM (01226 241744). "Using solid modelling data supplied by the customer, we were able to cut the lead time for initial prove-out and production, lower any risk of error, especially on such expensive material, and accelerate our machine setting," he says. There is little doubt that the benefits afforded by latest manufacturing technologies can make a staggering impact when it comes to energy sector parts. For example, take wind turbine manufacturer AH Industries, based in Kolding, Denmark. Here, investment in Steadyline toolholder technology from Seco Tools (01789 764341) has boosted productivity by 269% when milling main bearing housings. "We didn't have any particular problems per se, but this manufacturing operation was taking more time than it should and it was also very noisy," says production technician Klaus Døssing. "If we tried to increase feeds and speeds, our existing tools would break, so we decided that we needed to develop a new way of tackling the problem, namely by using Steadyline – Seco's vibration-damping shell mill toolholder." Steadyline's damping system features a vibration absorber that is positioned where the deflection is highest, at the front of the bar. According to Seco, it means users can push the tool harder and work as much as three times faster than before. Previously, milling operations on the mountings was around 30 minutes each: now it is less than 10. Box item 1 of 2 Edgecam joins NAMRC Edgecam (01189 226633), a CAD-neutral production CAM system, has joined the Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (NAMRC) to enhance the UK civil nuclear manufacturing industry's machining capabilities. The NAMRC machining team chose to work with Edgecam specifically for its mill-turn and horizontal boring capabilities. Edgecam's membership involves supplying software and services to the team. Late last year, Edgecam customers from all over the UK attended a special users' seminar at NAMRC in Rotherham. Box item 1 of 2 Arc of opportunity Arc Energy Resources (01453 823523) has completed a contract to carry out its specialist welding and fabrication services on a 'pig launcher and retrieval system' (PLR), destined for a time-critical application in the Cascade Chinook oilfield in the Gulf of Mexico, where operator Petrobras is laying an additional sub-sea pipeline to increase production. The contract, for the sub-sea division of Vector Technology Group, involved Arc Energy welding a soft landing arm system to the PLR, as well as fabricating a structural split flange support to enable the hub of a Vector Optima sub-sea connector to be attached to pipeline end terminations. In addition, Arc Energy fabricated and welded a number of special components to produce lifting brackets and control panels that needed to meet similarly demanding welding procedures for the Vector specification. First published in Machinery, February 2013