New 19m grinder for offshore pipes

The new grinding machine, which measures 19 metres in length by 2.5m wide and is 4.5m high, weighs approximately 70 tonnes and has a 16m travel for the grinding heads. The machine will supplement the company’s original grinding machine, which is more than 40 years old and will help to reduce lead times for process pipe. The new machine will be used to grind the outside diameter of seamless pipes, which vary in length from 5m up to 12m, with diameters from 200m up to 1,200m. It grinds the outside casing to give a smooth, flat finish to the pipe. The £250,000 contract is part of a capital investment expansion project at Wyman-Gordon’s Livingston site. The plant boasts one of the world’s largest ‘clam shell’ furnaces, which is used to heat treat the seamless pipes. CNES’ John Backhouse said the company’s engineers had to manufacture the machine from the original drawings. “The existing grinding machine at Wyman-Gordon includes both metric and imperial components and so CNES also had to cope with a mixture of original imperial drawings and new metric ones in order to build the new machine,” he explained. CNES received a contract from Wyman-Gordon to build the new grinding machine back in May 2007. The machine was built and ready to ship in November 2007. Delivery and installation – also undertaken by CNES – took place in December 2007 at Wyman-Gordon’s factory in Livingston. The grinding machine has since been placed inside an acoustic chamber at the plant and has just completed commissioning. Wyman-Gordon chief plant engineer Chris Morris said the machine should cut lead times considerably for process pipe. Off the back of this first job, Wyman-Gordon has given CNES additional work, including the manufacture of new safety staircases and platforms for its works. This job is totally unrelated to the grinding machine work but we felt we should give it to a supplier that we could trust,” Morris said.