Kværner Philadelphia starts flying

"What you're seeing here is the very best of the very best! " Jukka Gustafsson, VP of Production at Kværner Philadelphia Shipyard gestures around the yard's huge fabrication shop. It's about five football fields long and one and a half football fields wide and houses more than ten separate production lines.

It houses the most sophisticated and advanced equipment for building commercial ships available from the world's leading suppliers:plasma cutters, robotic cutters and welders, bending machines. The production lines are served by a network of more than twenty cranes with capacities ranging from ten to 120 tons backed by two medium and two heavy transporters.

Gustafsson led the team that designed the production facilities at Kværner's showcase Warnow Werft in Germany. But Kværner Philadelphia is not a clone of Warnow. It's an advance. Gustafsson and his colleagues were able not only to draw on lessons learned at both Warnow and Kværner Masa-Yards Turku New Shipyard in Finland, but also to take advantage of the most recent developments in shipbuilding equipment.

Key production machinery includes:

• DNC plate cutting system with five units integrated to corresponding production lines and shops;
• profile processing system integrated to the main production lines including off-line robotic cutting equipment;
• three advanced bending machines, two with a 600 tons maximum capacity each, one with a 1,270 tons maximum capacity
• flow lines for small, mid size and large stiffened panels and double hull structures, including straight and curved plates and profiles;
• automated welding equipment including off line robot welding system
• pipe processing equipment, machines and welding systems;
• the extensive network of remote controlled cranes and heavy transporters.
  
  

A Kranendonk welding robot provides one example of the sort of productivity gains this level of equipment can deliver, It is capable of welding on six axes and can weld a curved hull section in 6-8 hours, rather than the six days or more that might have been required by conventional methods. What's more, the robot performs a precision weld.

When MARINE LOG visited the yard a few weeks ago, the first components of the first ship to be built at the yard were already started on the journey that will see each section of the ship progressively become a part of a larger module, complete with pipes, ladders and electrical brackets. Moving ahead along the production line, though, were sections of what will be the intermediate gate in one of the yards two graving docks. Likely the most precisely built intermediate gate in the world, it will allow two hulls to be erected simultaneously.

The finishing touches were also being put to the Grand Block Shop. where modules of up to 600 tons apiece will be assembled before moving to the building dock.

REVOLUTIONARY WAR TRADITION
It's all a far cry from the old Philadelphia Navy Yard. That facility had a tradition that extends back to the Revolutionary War (at an earlier location) and which included new construction of warships as large as aircraft carriers. The last ship built at the Navy yard was launched in January 1969. In December 1970, though, the Department of Defense began awarding all new construction contracts to private yards and the Philadelphia yard became a repair facility. That era ended in September 1996 when the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard officially closed.

The Philadelphia Shipyard Development Corporation partnered with Kværner to bring newbuilding back to the site and work on the yard got started in 1998.

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