Page 25: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (April 2021)

technologies that are pretty well established in ship construc- ing new. Change is constant and these shifts have occurred in tion that could come into play in ship repair and conversion maritime and ashore. The US maritime industry was heavily and may dramatically change the game. skewed to repair due to high ship construction costs (and still

The box on page 23 shows a list of technologies and my is in the Great Lakes) and car repairs will be much reduced in take on their present adoptions. the coming years if EVs become dominant.

So how would ship repair and construction industry change Interestingly, as far as ship repair and conversion is con- with the adoption of these technologies? cerned, central to all of this is access to the full digital ship

It becomes economic math. If it is cheaper to build new construction model. As near as I am aware, shipbuilders are than convert; shipowners will build new. But if it is cheaper far from eager to provide it to the vessel purchaser, since it to repair or convert; shipowners will repair and convert. is a serious bit of intellectual property. But in a weak build-

Especially with regard to conversion, the availability of a ing market everything is negotiable, and to have the model full digital model of the ship is an astonishing cost saving. I leave the shipyard with the ship or to ensure full access to the am presently involved in a complex conversion project where model in the ship construction contract may very well be the there is no original digital model. The conversion yard knows bell weather in a shift in ship repair and conversion. As a gen- how to use many of the tools I mention (especially NC cut- eral bene? t it may increase ship useful lives and reduce waste ting and machining) and will take full advantage of them, but and scrapping problems. Now if we can make ships from the creation of the model and then the conversion design is less corrosive materials (see https://www.marinelink.com/ a very signi? cant percentage of the overall project cost (and ), news/eye-design-a-titanium-uss-enterprise-ncc-478807 timeline). If the original digital design were available, I esti- who knows how fast things will change. mate the conversion cost would be reduced by 10% or more.

For each column I write, MREN has agreed to make a

Today shipbuilders hold the technology edge, but once small donation to an organization of my choice. For this these technologies become ? rmly imbedded in the repair and column I nominate Mystic Seaport, an organization with conversion industry, the cutting edge will shift. This is noth- one of the country’s most important repair shops.

stgrad School adds Xerox ElemX 3D printer

Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) recently installed Xerox’s ElemX 3D Liquid Metal Printer in the

Large Experiment Annex at the

Naval Postgraduate School (NPS).

NPS is the ? rst site to receive in- stallation of this new technology. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Lenny Weston/RELEASED) www.marinelink.com 25

MR #4 (18-33).indd 25 4/1/2021 11:40:53 AM