
Pipe Fabrication Best Practices for Fuel, Ballast, and Cargo Systems
Poorly fabricated piping is a ticking liability—leaks invite pollution fines, downtime and reputational damage. Ship’s Solutions integrates 3D design, CNC bending, class-approved welding and digital as-builts to deliver robust, audit-ready piping systems.
Design begins with clash-free routing in a 3D engine-room model. Material matching follows: Cu-Ni 90/10 for seawater, duplex stainless for corrosive cargoes, Schedule-80 carbon-steel for high-pressure fuel. Precision CNC bends reduce weld joints—the inherent weak points—by up to 40 %.
ISO-9606 qualified welders deploy orbital TIG for thin-wall Cu-Ni and MIG-pulse for duplex, while NDT—radiography or phased-array UT—verifies every joint. Installation uses laser trackers to place flanges within ±1 mm; helium mass-spectrometry finds pinholes smaller than human follicles.
Systems undergo hydrostatic and pneumatic tests, then flush to ISO-4406 cleanliness. Digital as-builts capture corrosion allowance, paint spec and gasket metallurgy, simplifying future retrofits and proving compliance to class or charterers.
When piping is treated as an engineered workflow rather than ad-hoc hot work, it shifts from maintenance risk to long-term value, supporting safer, greener and cheaper voyages.
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