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6/25/2025
Pipe Fabrication Best Practices for Fuel, Ballast, and Cargo Systems
By Ship’s Solutions Technical Team Pipe Works

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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