Cabling through offshore platform wasn't allowed to get in the way. Grinding robot removes a cable-channel conduit's root overhangs.
A drilling platform is a complex structure in the open sea that is used to mine petroleum and natural gas. There are different implementations with regard to the construction type. Once there are steel-frame constructions, which are connected to the seabed. Floating platforms anchored with ropes are moreover involved.
The Dutch company Overlasko Konstruktie b.v. is expert in the manufacture of specific structures made of steel and special structures in the offshore area. It received the contract for constructing certain areas on a drilling platform. One of the sub-areas of this was the production and installation of a cable-channel conduit about 150 metres long with an interior diameter of 330 mm. Its path was supposed to lead directly through the drilling platform's steel framework structure. Consisting of several segments welded together, this cable-channel conduit was ultimately intended to accept a cable package.
A critical issue in this project, identified in advance of the work, was the diameter of the cable package, because this turned out to be only slightly less than the conduit's inside diameter. Welding together the cable-channel conduit's piece assumed corresponding significance due to these parameters. High root overhangs on the circumferential welds in the interior had to be avoid, because those overhangs would have practically prevented the cable from being laid through the conduit and, even worse, would have damaged the cable package.
In order to prevent that and to guarantee later, damage-free cable installation, a grinding robot with an inspection camera from INSPECTOR SYSTEMS was deployed after completion on the cable-channel conduit attached to the drilling platform. This proven, mature grinding-robot technology from INSPECTOR SYSTEMS has already been in use for a long time in the offshore area primarily in order to increase the service lives of especially stressed welding-seam connections of deep-sea pipes.
Not all of the weld seams had to be repaired in this case. After visual inspection and determination of the root overhangs' heights, only the critical circumferential welds were ground to fit from inside.
The cable package's installation went smoothly in the truest sense of the word.