Superseacat Waterjet Drive Shaft re-aligned

Fine-Align was contracted by Garvel Clyde to provide a resin chocking and alignment package to modify a design fault on Superseacat II. Cracks were appearing due to excessive vibration of the port side outer propeller shaft bearing pedestal.

Working to a drawing from the vessel's superintendent, Peter Reeman, the two stage process involved aligning and bolting the pedestal bearing to a doubling plate to stop the vibration then filling the remaining space with Epoxy Resin to spread the load.

"After just three days in Yarrow dry dock, the vessel was back in operation," says Garvel Clyde's John Davies. "Fine-Align's fast one stop measurement, alignment and resin chocking package had resolved a serious fault. It's a useful combination."

John had been sceptical about laser alignment when Fine-Align first contacted him in 1990. "But they took all the risk on the first job they did for me and I was very impressed - in a matter of hours they'd turned up and resolved a problem that we'd struggled with for three weeks. Now, if I've any sort of alignment problem I phone Fine-Align. These days, quite a few companies offer laser align but they're not equipped to do the actual job. Fine-Align are unique."

In Fine-Align, the marine industry has access to worldwide cover on alignment and resin-chocking from an experienced UK company not only interested in the theory and application of resins, but with exceptional marine engineering skills - and ISO 9001.

Distorted stern tube re-aligned and re-bored after seizure

When the propeller shaft of the Caledonian MacBrayne vessel Isle of Lewis seized while in passage it was dry-docked in Greenock for investigation and repair. Fine-Align were called to assist.

"We discovered the distortion on the stern tube, not normal in a three year old ship," explains Fine-Align's managing director Andrew McGill," and further inquiries suggested the cause of the misalignment. We were then contracted to re-bore both stern tubes, which we completed successfully. A year later, we re-measured them and found that the alignment had remained stable."

Caledonian MacBrayne's fleet technical manager, Doug McFarlene, has used the company on other projects: "Fine-Align do it all: measure, align, chock, bore and get instant hard copy alignment results on-site.

Individually they not only analyse and understand why a problem has occurred but will also work as part of a team to consider all ideas before arriving at a definitive solution. They're still on our supplier list based on best practice and past performance. ISO 9001 simply reinforces the quality of their work."

RoRo Ferry Stern Door and Pivots Bored In–situ

Fine-Align's ability to engineer solutions was demonstrated when a Hull-based ship repairer called with a problem.

The 85 ton, 9 metre wide stern door on the Merchant Victor, in dry dock for repairs, dropped and shifted sideways. A 1, 000 ton crane would be needed to remove the door, put it on a lorry to a remote workshop for machining, and replace it. Unless the work could be undertaken in-situ.

Fine-Align solved the problem, as Andrew McGill explains: "We got the shipyard to lift the door, using hydraulic jacks, into the correct closed position and weld it shut. We then knocked the pins out. Using lasers to maintain the alignment of the five hinges and transfer datum settings, we then line-bored slightly larger holes in the door hinge brackets in-situ, inserted larger pins and finally removed the welds holding the door.

"In just 30 hours, the two men had re-aligned and machined the stern door and hinges at the same time, in-situ, at a fraction of the anticipated cost."