McDermott Achieve the Same Level of Confidence in Bolting, as X-Rayed Welds
The X-raying of welds on critical joints has been standard practice for many years, a practice carried out every time without fail by McDermott at their Tampico, platform construction site in Altamira, Mexico. With quality assured welds, the weakest link becomes the closed joint, it’s fasteners and gasket. Production Engineers at the facility wanted to gain the same level of confidence and quality assurance in the joint as the x-rayed welds. It was with this goal in mind that they contacted Torq-Comm.
The McDermott production engineers gave Torq-Comm what they thought was a challenge, to record the load applied to each and every fastener, real time and store the data for future reference. They also wanted to record the technician’s details and the tooling being used to close the joint. Oh, and one more thing, the data had to be 100% fool proof without a chance of any data being changed or manually input at any stage no matter how senior the individual.
Until recently, that would have been a pipe dream (quite literally), but the Torq-Comm Commander XT ticked every box and then some, because they could set and reset the torque or tensioner pump pressure remotely and incredibly quickly, not to mention accurately.
Needless to say, McDermott committed to purchasing a set for trial and a Torq-Comm technician travelled to Mexico to train McDermott engineers on how to use the Commander XT. Training was carried out on a 32” flange with 2” bolts. As the Commander is as easy to use as 1-2-3, training was completed in no time. A set of TorqTags? was also used to ensure the correct bolting sequence was followed. If the incorrect bolt was scanned for identification before tightening, the system would not allow the engineers to continue until the correct one was scanned.
Joint integrity assurance can now be achieved through the use of the Torq-Comm Commander XT system, raising levels of confidence and safety for companies such as McDermott and their clients alike.