The changes this week may not be as visually obvious from the progress on PGL (Project GoldiLocks) this first week of May 2018 but it was a very productive week none the less. This was our 2nd four day work week in a row as May 1st is Labor Day in Turkey and the EU countries. The most visible progress you’ll see in the pictures below is the separation of the thousands of individual pieces from the AL plates that we covered in last week’s update. Less visible is that the deck plating has now been tack welded in place on the jig as this is readied to soon receive all the vertical transverse frames or ribs as you might think of them, along with the longitudinal running stringers which run underneath the deck plate. I’ll let the photos below do most of the talking and there is also a set of video clips compiled into a summary of the week at the end.
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Let’s start by zooming in on two of the aft deck plates to show how edges of AL plate that will be butt welded need to be beveled like this. It is a simple manual process done with a grinder and these 45 degree bevels form a nice deep V groove where the weld will go and enables full penetration of the weld for maximum strength.
If you look closely at the plates in this and the photo below you will see the reference line which has been etched 20mm in from the outer the sides of the deck plates. These are used to help line up each plate and then be used to help trim these edges into the long sweeping curves of the deck before the hull plates go on.
On plate this thin (5mm) it is arguably unnecessary to put these grooves in so they are relatively minor here but on the thicker plate it is very important to ensure complete penetration of the welds on both sides.
As the hull is initially built upside down, the surfaces you see here are the undersides of the deck plate so these will form the “ceiling” of the spaces below. None of these surfaces will be visible once the boat is built because all surfaces will be heavily insulated with various thicknesses of EPDM rubber. EPDM (ethylene propylene diene monomer) is a type of closed cell synthetic rubber with excellent insulation properties, zero water vapor absorption, 0.2% water absorption, highly UV resistant and odorless. and is that black spongy feeling closed cell rubber foam you may have seen this material surrounding hot water pipes refrigeration systems.. We will use EPDM around hot and cold pipes as well but we will mostly use it for creating a hull that is like a Thermos bottle; completely insulated against hot and cold.
These underside welds will be left as is and the welds on top of the deck we walk on will be ground flush.
Remember those piles of AL that used to look like this?
and this…..
Now they look like this……..
and this…….
and this
and this,
It may look a bit chaotic but there is a method to this madness as the parts have been sorted into piles with a common purpose or location to make it easier to find as the assembly begins.
Each part requires some amount of preparation for assembly and welding from smoothing off the tabs that held the parts into he plate for shipping or rounding over edges where pipes and wires will pass through or putting on those bevels we saw on the deck plates earlier in this post.
You can also see quite clearly in this picture that any areas which are going to be welded have been lightly ground to remove the layer of hard aluminium oxide that naturally forms on bare AL plate. You can see the clear contrast of the darker and duller AL oxide and the brighter silvery areas that are fresh aluminium. The oxide layer can interfere with getting good clean welds and hence the removal. But over time all the surfaces will have their protective hard oxide coating and blend together into the beauty that bare aluminum has, at least to my eyes.
This is the inevitable scrap AL left over when all the individual parts are removed from the 6m x 2m AL plates they were cut from. Once all the parts are removed and all the scrap is left it will be sent back to the AL supplier to be melted down and rolled into all new panels for someone else’s boat.
One of the major features of building from aluminium I appreciate is that it is perhaps the most recyclable of all materials. In the case of aluminum cans for example, every gram or ounce you put in the recycle bin gets recycled and ends up back on a store shelf in just 60 days. . Recycling of aluminum cans saves 95% of the energy required to make the same amount of aluminum from its virgin source. One ton of recycled aluminum saves 14,000 kilowatt hours (Kwh) of energy, 40 barrels of oil, 152 million BTU’s of energy, and 10 cubic yards of landfill space.
And so we also have a growing modern art sculpture forming outside, which has grown from this …………………
…………… to this so far.
it doesn’t get talked about too much but it is a growing problem figuring out what to do with FRP or fiberglass boats that are scrapped and even more so with the newer composites such as Carbon fiber and Kevlar. I read that there are inroads being made to cut these up into small pieces and be able to recycle some of them but it is currently very labour intensive and expensive process.
No coincidence then that Baris and Dincer named this company and shipyard GreeNaval! I come back to the many other ways we have focused on maximising the efficient use of energy overall in not only the building of Möbius and this new line of eXpedition Passage Maker or XPM boats, but also with optimised efficiency after being launched.
The more significant change this week though is that the construction phase of the hull has truly begun now with the deck plates being tack welded to the jig in preparation for the individual deck panels to be fully welded together.
The layout is based on the centerline and here you see Enver, the Master Welder in the foreground with the laser sight line tool in the middle of the aft deck area from which reference marks are then put on the jig and deck plates to line them up with this center line or CL.
This is Uğur in the foreground, our main man on the workshop floor, using the red line projected by the laser to precisely mark where the CL of the very aft end of the deck lies.
Up on the front deck it is the same procedure of working from the CL out to accurately line up where to plates butt together and to precisely position them on the jig.
Using the reference marks and the jig the deck plates are pressed down firmly against those concave curved edges of the jig underneath and then tack welded together so the deck plates accurately follow the curve of the jig edges which were precisely CNC cut from the data in the 3D model.
Here you see Uğur providing more than enough weight to push the 5mm deck plates against the jig while another one of the welders is underneath tack welding the deck plate where he is standing to the jig.
Once all the deck plates are all tacked in just the right position the transverse seams where the individual plates butt together will be welded together which takes us full circle from the V grooves we saw at the beginning of this post.
With the deck plates tacked in place this shot looking across the aft deck to what will be the aft Starboard (right) corner, you can how the plates have again been lightly ground to remove that oxide layer wherever welds will go.
The transverse (side to side) lines you see here are where there is either a seam where two plates will be welded together or where the edge of one of the vertical frames will be welded to the deck plate. The longitudinal or lengthwise ground lines are where those stringers we have talked about so much in previous posts will be welded to the deck plate. You can appreciate how this grid of vertical AL components will make this a very rigid deck and boat.
And one last indication of the progress this week, these “Weapons of Mass CONstruction” have been brought into our bay ready for the action they will soon see in assembling and building the hull. These are now sitting where that big stack of AL plates sat just a few days ago, so as you can see, another very productive week thanks to the great crew here at GreeNaval Yachts and all the members of Team Goldilocks.
Stay tuned for more folks, we’ve only just begun!
As always, here is a video compilation of clips I shot through the week to give you another perspective of the work. A bit longer but some of you have been asking for more details so here you go.
Thanks for joining us on this adventure, hope you are enjoying it as much as we are. Wouldn’t be the same without you.
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