The grand unveiling at Damen Shipyard
In a flyby visit to the Netherlands, where it could have quite literally been “Rotterdam or anywhere”, due to seeing only the airport, hotel, a port and airport again in a less than 24 hour stay, I got the chance to witness the culmination of a seven month project to fit the world’s first 3D printed ship propeller onto a real seafaring vessel.
Damen, the International shipyard group whose vessel the part has been installed onto, brought together partners and press at its Netherlands site to introduce the project and deliver the grand unveiling on its Stan Tug 1606 boat. Opening the event, Jan-Wim Dekker, CPO, Damen Shipyards, hailed Rotterdam as real “engine” in turning the maritime sector on to additive manufacturing (AM), speaking about how the technology fits into a much bigger picture moving towards a smarter industry.
The WAAMpeller up-close
The project which has been carried out at RAMLAB, the Port of Rotterdam’s additive manufacturing lab, has been a proving ground for using Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing and subtractive machining to produce large-scale functional certified marine parts. Around 30 partners involved in the RAMLAB consortium have contributed to the project including Autodesk, and the company’s Global Business Director, Detlev Reicheneder, was on hand to explain how it fits into the software giant’s wider vision of the future of making things.
“This is a great example of a fabulous project which shows how companies can go ahead and prepare themselves for the future,” Detlev explained. “I have seen so many industries coming and going in the past and its great to see how industries can undergo a transition and go ahead of that, not getting bowled over by changes.”
The part, named the WAAMpeller, has taken 256 welding hours to create, with several iterations, material changes and a rigorous testing process to reach certification. The final version which was installed on-site and class approved by Bureau Veritas measures 1.35 m in diameter and weighs approximately 200 kg. As this is a first-of-its-kind project, there were no definitive guidelines for certification and Bureau Veritas spoke about how it had to first consider the material, Nickel Aluminium Bronze, to ensure properties remained the same in all directions, and then look at the way cast parts are typically tested including speed trials, bollard pull and crash stop testing, to test the propeller in-situ.
The future of marine parts?
During the event, Detlev asked: “Who would have thought a few years ago that a propeller of that size could be printed?” It has taken the maritime industry a long time to consider AM for end-use parts, falling behind the aerospace and automotive sectors which have been applying the technology for some time. There are numerous reasons why this is the case, the maritime industry is very conventional and the long lifespan of a ship usually means innovation is slow. However, as Martijn Nieuwenhuijs, Marine and Offshore Chief Executive Netherlands, Bureau Veritas, commented during our visit, to innovate, "you need to have people willing to stick out their neck" and that is exactly what the projects partners have done to get to this point.
Speaking with Kelvin Hamilton, Senior Technical Consultant at Autodesk, he explained how the WAAMpeller presents a turning point for the industry showing how additive can be beneficial, particularly in the case of spare part manufacture where marine parts are often not readily available and can take months to arrive. Now the propeller project has been certified, there is scope to replicate the process for other parts.
Interestingly, the more additive-savvy of viewers will notice that the part does not look like a typical AM product. Rather than optimising with strange geometries, it replicates a standard traditionally manufactured propeller and as a result, the design doesn't explicitly lend itself to AM. But this isn’t just using additive for additive’s sake and the benefits of adopting this type of technology across a network of ports could prove extremely cost and time effective through smaller inventories and with AM labs across a decentralised manufacturing network.
Following the launch we took a tour around the Port of Rotterdam's Innovation Dock where the RAMLAB facility was setup just over a year ago. Inside is an engineer's dream of start-ups and technologies altogether under one roof from water drones to robot-made architecture. At RAMLAB there are two WAAM systems in use trialling different variations of the part and Vincent Wegener, Managing Director, RAMLAB, explained how fellow start-ups within the Dock are keen to see if WAAM could benefit their projects.
The day was filled with interesting conversations from people working on tailored materials for wire arc manufacturing to others thinking about how this technology might be applied elsewhere. The framework and the proof for AM in this capacity is now in place, it's now up to the rest of the industry to come aboard and take the next steps.
