Page 60: of Marine Technology Magazine (April 2013)

handed bending; this increases manufacturing ß exibility and throughput by allowing long and complex parts to be pro- duced from a single length of tubing in one continuous cycle. Installed at SiemensÕ Kongsberg facility at the end of last year, the machine is currently undergoing commissioning and due to commence operation during January 2013.All critical movement axes on the Unison tube bender are controlled by precision servomotors, enabling fast and re- peatable fabrication of parts with accuracies to within frac- tions of a millimeter. The machine is also capable of gen- erating the high torque needed for bending tubes fabricated from exotic alloys such as Inconel, Duplex and Super Du- plex, which are used extensively for subsea applications to improve corrosion resistance. Siemens SubseaÕs Þ rst project involving the Unison machine will be the South Belut Project production of 800 tubes, all made from 316 and requiring complex bends and orbital welding in both ends, for use on umbilical termination units known as MQCs. These are used on various subsea structures, including Christmas trees, and SiemensÕ versions can accom- modate up to 13 hydraulic lines, demanding extremely tight manufacturing tolerances. Each tube is designed on a Inventor 3D CAD system, and the company generally then produces a prototype to verify its accuracy and feed any necessary cor- rections back into the production process to ensure the quality of subsequent parts. Automating the tube bending process is set to accelerate this procedure Ð the CAD system and bend-ing machine are linked by a production computer network Ð and will help Siemens Subsea Products maintain the fully traceable manufacturing records needed for this industry. www.siemens.com/oilgas New LedaFlow Release Kongsberg Oil & Gas Technologies AS (KOGT), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kongsberg Gruppen ASA, announced the release of LedaFlow (1.3), the new transient multiphase simulator for wells and pipelines. Continuing with KOGTÕs ambition to provide greater detail and accuracy to multi- phase simulation in the Oil & Gas industry, this release of LedaFlow contains signiÞ cant additions and improvements, including: a new separator model,  the bypass pigging capabilities,  black oil PVT deÞ nitions,  dead oil circulation using custom ß uids,  standard volume ß owrates, and  emulsion models.KOGT has reports an average 70% speed increase using multi-CPU capabilities.Products April 2013MTR #3 (50-64).indd 60MTR #3 (50-64).indd 604/4/2013 9:02:48 AM4/4/2013 9:02:48 AM