Shipyard boosts productivity and quality with Hypertherm

Company overview: Bollinger Shipyards

Bollinger Shipyards has a 75-year legacy as a leading designer and builder of high-performance Coast Guard cutters, U.S. Navy patrol boats and salvage vessels, research vessels, ocean-going double hull barges, offshore oil field support vessels, tugboats, rigs, lift boats, inland waterways push boats, barges, and other steel and aluminum products from its new construction shipyards as part of the U.S. maritime industrial base. In total, Bollinger has delivered more than 185 vessels to the Coast Guard, including 54 sentinel-class fast response cutters, as well as over 3,800 vessels built for government and commercial customers.

Danny Richardel, Bollinger's Vice President of New Construction Production, explains that it takes a carefully coordinated team of people to bring any boat to life. It all begins with Bollinger engineers, who work closely with the customer to identify the right vessel and make any needed modifications before starting the job of cutting and welding the metal that will make up the finished product.

In addition to a full team of design engineers, Bollinger employs a combination of mechanical, electrical, and weld engineers, project managers, material managers, accountants, electricians, carpenters, fabricators, and welders. All teams work five days per week, up to two shifts a day. Some, like paint crews, work through the weekend when necessary.

Challenge: Poor plasma cut quality and outsourcing challenges required change

Keeping jobs on schedule is critical to ensuring Bollinger’s success. Even a small hiccup can send a carefully planned project careening out of control, resulting in a missed delivery date, a ballooning budget, or both. To keep disruptions to a minimum, Bollinger employs a lean manufacturing methodology throughout its ISO-9001 facilities, including its 250-acre shipyard in Lockport, Louisiana.

Bollinger's first foray into the world of plasma did not go well. The plasma system’s cut quality was not good enough, so employees were spending a lot of time on secondary operations. Frustrated, Bollinger reached out to ALLtra Corporation, and ALLtra recommended adding a new Hypertherm plasma system to the existing CNC table already in place in Lockport.

Bollinger cuts several different types of metal. Typically, the boat hulls are made of mild steel for strength while the superstructure is fabricated out of aluminum since it weighs less. Bollinger uses plasma to cut 5086 and 5456 grade aluminum, AH36 and A36 mild steel, and even stainless once in a while. Pipe, pipe saddles, and holes are also cut with plasma. There are some parts the plasma can't cut, such as small, intricate parts used in watertight doors that require a very high level of precision and need a different process.

"We're always controlling costs and looking for ways to reduce expenses. In the past, we fabricated our own water-tight doors, but we lost that expertise and began purchasing those items," Richardel says. There were pitfalls to outsourcing. Purchasing the doors and hatches was too costly, but outsourcing production ran into quality and scheduling issues. "Going outside the organization was slowing us down. Our projects would get bumped, so they took longer, and our customers were not happy with the quality," Richardel says. The Bollinger team decided it was time to start performing the work in-house again.

Solution: HyPerformance plasma & waterjet systems deliver results

Bollinger adopted several Hypertherm products at its Lockport shipyard, including a HyPerformance® HPR260 plasma system, MAX200® conventional plasma, and ProNest® CAD/CAM nesting software to tie it all together. To bring manufacturing water-tight doors back in-house, the company chose Koike Aronson’s K-Jet 6 12 system with Hypertherm’s HyPrecision® 50 waterjet pump. Bollinger couldn't be happier with its choices.

HyPerformance plasma systems

HyPerformance plasma systems deliver superior productivity in X-Y, bevel, marking, and robotic cutting applications on metal ranging up to 160 mm (6 ¼ inches) thick. The combination of faster cutting speeds, rapid process cycling, quick changeovers, and high reliability dramatically lowers operating costs while boosting overall performance, productivity, and profitability. HyPerformance plasma systems deliver the ultimate in HyPerformance mild steel cutting, plus aluminum capability, and unmatched stainless steel cut quality.

Benefits of using HyPerformance plasma include:

• HyPerformance plasma cuts fine-feature parts with superior quality and consistency.
• Faster cutting speeds deliver more parts per hour.
• Higher quality cutting virtually eliminates the cost of secondary operations.

Business impact: Improved cut quality & efficiency drive increased revenue

The new plasma system delivers faster, better cuts, reducing secondary operations and increasing efficiency.

After installing the waterjet system, the company is now manufacturing its own water-tight doors and hatches. "The doors were a catalyst for buying a waterjet, but really we just wanted to do more work in-house," Richardel says. Adds Fanguy, "The waterjet is so precise. Parts don't have heat-affected areas and the machine set-up is quick. We can cut a variety of materials, like metal, plastics, and rubber."

Bollinger also discovered an unexpected benefit. The K-Jet system is so efficient that Bollinger is able to manufacture and sell doors to other boat builders, creating another revenue stream for the company. "It took about a day to figure out the ROI on the waterjet and it was positive," Richardel says. He estimates it will take less than two years to see a return on the investment.

In addition to speed and cut quality, minimizing waste is critical for Bollinger, a factor that was hard to control when its work was outsourced. Bollinger uses Hypertherm's ProNest on both its plasma and waterjet tables, enjoying the CAD/CAM software's ability to efficiently nest parts together, so very little scrap remains. It also uses ProNest's True Bevel technology to cut beveled edges.

Learn how Hypertherm’s HyPerformance plasma systems can help your business strike the perfect balance between cut quality, cut speed, and cost. Click the button below, fill out the form, and a Hypertherm product expert will contact you.