Been a while since I posted, but I wanted to share some of what I've been doing for the past couple of years.
I took a job in the surveying department at Bath Iron Works, a naval contracting subsidiary of General Dynamics. We build Arleigh Burke and the new Zumwalt class destroyers.
The biggest change for me besides having to convert millimeters to feet and inches and back again on the fly in my head has been the nature of control. Ground controls such as traverse stations and other targets no longer have static positions. The ship is what controls the values of my stations. When it moves, the whole world moves.
Other weird/different things:
- Waterborne surveying - turn the compensator off and cut in on a plane to be level with the ship, even if it's rolling.
- My first use of a Wild T2; and my amazement at the precision one can achieve with angular measurement only.
- Seeing the looks on old timers faces who have been using levels, theodolites and steel tape to do unit erection and their amazement at the capability of a total station to locate x y and z in one go.
The last point in the list illustrates the growth the department has gone through within the last 4 years. Around 2009, the department still used mostly T2's, levels, rulers and tapes to lay out control and regulate units.
Now we have 10 total stations, 5 of which are robots. We own 1 API laser tracker, rent another, and are soon going to buy a 3rd. We use Spatial Analyzer, a very expensive piece of software but well worth it.
I've been begging the higher up's for a scanner; it will come someday but for now we continue using Photo-G for our 3D work.
Anyway, on to the videos:
This first one is the 2200 unit of the new Zumwalt class ship. I wasn't employed here yet, but it's a good example of unit joining.
[flash width=560 height=315]//www.youtube.com/v/mwfLunTLlJc?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0[/flash]
Next was the deckhouse (superstructure) erection onto the Zumwalt. I was there for this one; the 1.5 minute video represents a 16 hour day to get the deckouse off the barge, and then a 21 hour day to erect the unit onto the ship. Our task was to monitor the deckhouse for level. At first, the engineers insisted the unit could not go any more than 2 inches out of level. We quickly told them that was impossible given the circumstances, and then they said they could live with 2 feet. :-S Anyway, we used 4 robots and set up the four collectors in front of our lead surveyor (a 45 year veteran of the shipyard) who gave instant readings to the crane crews. The crane foreman said afterward that that was one of the fastest lifts of this size he had done, directly because of the speed with which we could relay readings.
[flash width=560 height=315]//www.youtube.com/v/6Pova2gC-x8?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0[/flash]
The last video is the transfer of the Zumwalt into drydock and it's subsequent launch into the water. Our task here was location. We set up on the drydock and established our position relative to the ship. If something had gone wrong and the ship had to go back onto it's cradle, our task was to stake it back into position within an inch. Everything went fine, and we got to ride the ship back to the pier. By the way, that's me in the foreground, monitoring the bow.
[flash width=560 height=315]//www.youtube.com/v/MaifVT_WVvI?hl=en_US&version=3&rel=0[/flash]
No job is perfect, but I love this one. I can look beyond the crap and be amazed at what I do. Anyway, I hope you all like this.
Great Change of Pace
Wow! Sounds like you've found a neat career. One I definitely would not have ever considered, being like a zillion miles from any large body of water.
Could you post links to your videos, please?. iPad doesn't do flash.
Cool! I'd love to see more of what you actually do.
And recently I have bought some Wild T3000 electronic theodolites (0.1 second guns) that Boeing used to build aircraft. I'd love to know how they used them as well.
We'll be doing something similar, but spatial analyzer is not within our budget. We're looking at SC4W with Trimble S series total stations and SMRs.
Thanks for sharing this
Dave:
Here are the links:
Very cool job and videos. Having spent a good part of my youth "haze grey and underway" that brought back some good memories. My ship busted a sonar dome in the North Atlantic just before I reported onboard and spent some time in the shipyards in Maine. Apparently the sailors were so well liked in town that they couldn't buy a beer themselves while the ship was being patched up. The ship you built looks like an awesome vessel. And to think you are going to entrust it to a bunch of 19 year old kids and a handful of crusty chiefs.
Thanks.
Very cool. Thanks for sharing.
-V
> The biggest change for me besides having to convert millimeters to feet and inches and back again on the fly in my head has been the nature of control. >
Are the plans to build the vessels in metric then ?
Great videos, Thanks .
Nice videos, thanks for sharing.
Thank you for another view of professional surveying.
What area of surveying would you classify this work under ?
Cheers,
Derek
> Thank you for another view of professional surveying.
>
> What area of surveying would you classify this work under ?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Derek
Most of the World calls it dimensional control surveying
Some things are in metric, and others are in feet and inches. Occasionally those things meet.
freaking awesome!
Thank you for posting.
Welcome back.
I made some moves to try and get on at a shipyard during the economic downturn, they called their surveyors "optics men". I do not recall what soft they used but think it was something fairly old fashioned, maybe even run on a 48.
This is the part that I have a hard time wrapping my head around:
"Waterborne surveying - turn the compensator off and cut in on a plane to be level with the ship, even if it's rolling."
I can follow working in a environment not normal to gravity, just shoot two points and reference back onto the line between them with sta, o/s, perp dist and delta ht.
But how do you bring in a third or fourth point to form the plane? By "cut in" do you just mean normalizing to the deck and calling it the bench with measured distances away from the deck being delta ht. and if so, how do you guarantee that you are measuring a perpendicular distance to the plate?
Thanks for sharing! I really enjoy the glances into the different niches of surveying that have been offered up here.
Or industrial metrology
Recently a few of our guys have gone on to be dimensional control surveyors in the offshore industry. One is on a rig in the North Sea and the other at a yard in Sth Korea. I think they mainly do as-builts of existing plants and check for clashes in forthcoming works.
Met an older surveyor a good few years ago who had ship building experience, it sounded very interesting. he was a little underawed to be working on a small supermarket with me!
Well, you need to shoot at least 3 points to define a plane.
The reverse is true if you're cutting into an already existent plane. You need to use 3 points to set the instrument to the plane.
Hope that helps.
Mathematically you need 3.
Best Practices require at least 4, to provide a check.