RoboCrane

Tools for Ship Building

Flying Carpet

To assist workers in dry dock ship repair and conversion, a concept called the "Flying Carpet" has been developed by NIST under the Maritech Advanced Shipbuilding Enterprise Program. The presentations shown below include the status of this concept.Platform-Welder

(click on the image to download the pdf)

Flying Carpet aticle in HOIST magazine

Flying Carpet Presentations:

Performance Enhancement for Ship Repair/Conversion Process

Platform-Welder

Reconfigurable welding systems for shipyards could prove to be invaluable toward rapid weld set-up, calibration, and reconfigurability for frequent changes in repair and conversion processes. This concept shown in the presentation below, applies RoboCrane technology for flexible fixturing to reconfigurable welding in shipyards.

Platform-Welder Presentation:

Advanced Double Hull Ship Welding

The photo's below were taken at the Advanced Double Hull Ship Welding Demonstration held on December 3, 1998 at NIST. This live demonstration was also available at this website for access around the world via the internet. The project was sponsored by the Office of Naval Research and included Naval Surface Warfare Center (project manager), Advanced Technology and Research Corporation (advanced weld platform - including welder, weld robot, weld robot boom extension, and weld platform; and controller) developer, Newport News Shipbuilders (double-hull ship weld experts and demonstration mock-up supplier), and NIST (RoboCrane - advanced weld platform deployment system) provider. This first project phase demonstrated the feasibility of using available, advanced, remote-control/semi-autonomous technologies to solve a manufacturing challenge in ship construction. Also, demonstrated were advanced carrier-bottom welding concepts with the facility-mounted RoboCrane supporting an industrial robot.

(click on the photo to enlarge the image)