Cammell Laird

Nearly 200 years of solid shipbuilding experience

Welding productivity and safety with Kemppi SuperSnake

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Cammell Laird is a renowned British company with nearly 200 years of experience in marine shipbuilding. In addition to its core expertise, Cammell Laird specializes in commercial ship repair, upgrade and conversion, heavy fabrication and military ship refit projects. Strong engineering know-how allows the company to offer its services to a wide range of industries such as the energy, offshore and petrochemical sectors.

Based on the River Mersey in the Liverpool City Region, the company's Birkenhead site covers 130 acres with a modular construction hall, four dry docks and an extensive network of covered fabrication and construction facilities. As one of the largest modular construction halls in Europe, Cammell Laird's 15 000 m² facility can support up to 300 coded welders per shift.

Cammell Laird Shiprepairers and Shipbuilders Ltd

Shipbuilding

Birkenhead, United Kingdom

Extended reach with SuperSnake: Kemppi's SuperSnake subfeeders were up to the challenge presented by Cammell Laird's complex fabrication of middle and aft flight decks for HMS Queen Elizabeth, an aircraft carrier of the Royal Navy.

Main challenge

In 2010, Cammell Laird received a £44 million contract to build two 12-meter-high sections of the middle and aft flight deck for HMS Queen Elizabeth, the new 65 000 tonnes aircraft carrier being built by the Aircraft Carrier Alliance for the Royal Navy. Due to the complexity of the carrier section, Cammell Laird turned to Kemppi for innovative solutions on managing the gigantic welding project.

We are mainly using 1.2 mm, sometimes 1.4 mm flux cored wire with SuperSnake and both wires are very easy to feed through. This state-of-the-art equipment has definitely helped reduce our production times and costs as well as helped us in the way we carry out welding on board.

Jeff Jones, Structures Manager, Cammell Laird

Kemppi's solution

Kemppi solution Inside Cammell Laird's Birkenhead Construction Hall. View more images

In addition to FastMig Synergic 400A (now available as FastMig X Regular) welding equipment suitable for MIG/MAG and stick (MMA) welding, Kemppi provided Cammell Laird with several SuperSnake GT02S subfeeders, which are especially designed for complex fabrications with difficult or restricted access. The 25-meter-long hoses allowed welders to thread their way easily through hatchways, holes and gaps to their worksites. This eliminated the need to carry power sources and wire feed units around or arrange cranage for them when working on different decks, saving a tremendous amount of man hours and effort.

As an ideal tool for shipyards, SuperSnake was well received by the Cammell Laird welders. With a standard welding gun on the end of SuperSnake, the welders could operate within a larger area than before without any additional weight or strain. The equipment was described as very reliable in use, allowing much faster and more economical welding work.

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