Huisman develops and builds heavy construction equipment for the onshore and offshore market and the leisure industry.
Huisman's Czech branch is mainly used for building sub-assemblies for pipe-laying systems and complete cranes, which are assembled on ships by Huisman in Schiedam. Because of its price and broad knowl-edge and experience in welding steel S690 for heavy constructions, and also because of the trust Mammoet puts into the company, Huisman is one of the most important suppliers for this project.
Temporary spoke structures
The temporary spokes (rigid spokes) consist of compound sheeting and pipe structures, which are welded in 11-metre sections and coated, after which they are shipped to New York. There, at the Marshalling Yard, the individual spoke sections will be assembled and will support the construction of the wheel. Once the wheel structure has been completed, the temporary spokes will be replaced by steel cables. The production of all the main and secondary steelwork for the New York Wheel will keep Huisman busy for over six months.
Valk Welding robots weld and cut
Huisman Konstrukce s.r.o. has two Valk Welding welding robots and a plasma cutting robot for cutting welding edges in thick sheet mate-rial. Over the past four years the company has considerably extended its knowledge and experience of robot welding, supported by training courses at Valk Welding Cz.
The Dutch Head of Quality Control and Welding Coordinator, Mat Pustjens, regularly shares his experiences with Valk Welding. "Together we maintain staff knowledge of software at the highest level, so that we can also make the most of the latest software options.
High complexity in very thick sheets
Mat Pustjens: "The parts for the spokes are welded with the robot by means of MAG welding, with different filled wires in several A4 to A7 layers. We also process products for other customers with different complexities from sketch to end product. We program this in DTPS
(offline programming and simulation software) whenever possible. For butwelds from 40 to 100 mm, which are sometimes welded in as many as 120 layers, we use ThickPlate software, a plug-in in DTPS. Process-ing such heavy structures is where much of our expertise lies. With the welding robots we have better control of the heat application than is the case with manual welding, so we achieve a better quality and a higher efficiency rate, which also means less post-processing work." www.huismanequipment.com
