The offshore industry has grown substantially in recent years. This development has allowed HATLAPA to dip its toe into new waters. Becoming an active supplier of offshore equipment has expanded HATLAPA’s knowledge of winch and deck machinery engineering, broadened its product portfolio and at the same time provided the chance to address more of the market’s demands.
HATLAPA has been producing different types of winches for many years. In addition to the standard winches manufactured day in and day out in HATLAPA’s production facility in Northern Germany, newly developed, more specialised winches have been added to the portfolio. HATLAPA prides itself in being able to offer its customers the widest possible range of winches", says HATLAPA’s Offshore Sales Manager Uwe Nickschat.
A customer can either take a pick from HATLAPA’s off-the-shelf product range, or speak to the engineering team to have a winch tailor made to their specific requirements. One of these specialist type winch projects was the cooperation with US-based OIL STATES SKAGIT SMATCO. In this cooperation, HATLAPA and OIL STATES joined their capacities and created a towing winch with a capability to tow up to 6000kN in line pull. Such winches combine years of experience and engineering developments, as their roots have been part of HATLAPA’s portfolio since the early 1980’s.
HATLAPA’s winch portfolio can be categorised in several ways, one of the logical ways is to separate them into the different drives they use. HATLAPA offers a wide variety of low- and high-pressure hydraulic drive or electrical drive winches. HATLAPA is one of only two suppliers worldwide of low pressure hydraulic driven winches, producing its own drives at its factory in Germany. This drive is the preference of many AHTS operators due to its excellent reliability. As an alternative however, HATLAPA also offers electrically driven winches. Such winches are seen as generally more efficient with an efficiency rate of 18-20% higher than hydraulically driven winches. Electrically driven winches also offer faster response to monitoring, better control systems and they are also better suited for stepless drive tension and load control systems.
In the offshore industry, automatic tension and control systems are especially important for supply and support vessels, allowing them to carry out their activities in all kinds of weather conditions. These winches also work together with the tidal cycle, meaning that at low-tide, the rope will automatically slacken and at high-tide the rope will be pulled taught again – this ensures that the landing ship will be held in the same position at all times. HATLAPA has already delivered several orders for specialist offshore winches, for example for the vessel WindLift I. HATLAPA designed winches that the windfarm construction vessel used when it operated as a multi functional working platform. Far offshore, the ship is able to raise itself onto its four legs, 72 metres long and up to 10 metres above the water surface. With the help of this 100 metre long and 36 metre wide platform it is able to erect the wind turbine foundations up to 90 metres high with a weight of 1,500 tons, securely fixed 30 metres deep in the seabed. This ensures that even at 3 metre high waves and a wind speed of 4 miles per hour the platform will provide a safe working environment. Once the foundation has been laid, the wind turbine’s tower and nacelle are erected.
In addition to winches, HATLAPA also provides specialist deck machinery. All of HATLAPA’s equipment has been proven in different working conditions.
Among the many specialist features available are:
- Split type rope drums
- Inner-friction clutches for all rope drums instead of claw clutches
- Remotely hydraulically operated drum brakes
- Upgraded hydraulic power packs for highest levels of redundancy
- Load control system incorporating full remote control
- Sensors within strong points placed locally at the winches
- Bridge remote operation with joystick and touch screen
All the features above add to the user-friendliness and reliability of HATLAPA’s winches. Even though the common claw clutch provides a reliable fixed and rigid connection between the driving motor, shafts, gears and drums, it is usually designed as a solid block material which by machining, drilling and related shaping fits its counterpart with the same raw "tooth-shape". They are driven by high pressure hydraulic cylinders moving the loose part on the slide area of the shaft into and out of the fixed part. On one hand a strong, reliable and stiff means to ensure connection of drive trains, the claw clutch on the other hand lacks easy disconnection under high loads. However, the inner-friction type clutch is a non-interlocking type of clutch which means that in difficult situations a friction-locked power train or transmission is the safer choice. Easy and fail safe release under-load is one of the most important aspects in offshore tug-boat operations. When a tug boat is escorting another vessel or platform, this is an imperative feature in the winch. This means that the tug master can manually release the tow drum in order to avoid the escorted vessel from being pulled under water.
In addition to these features, another specialist feature is the ability to remotely operate the deck machinery from the bridge. This element incorporates the use of a joystick and touch screen monitor. HATLAPA is also a supplier of winch chairs which were specially developed to meet the extreme needs and levels of comfort required when undertaking the precise and arduous steering operations required on specialist vessels. The HATLAPA 2500 MX provides plentiful space for a number of steering controls and instruments such as joysticks, monitors and control systems. The 2500 MX features as standard a large height adjustable column (MX column) which also simplifies cable routing. The height of the seat can be electrically adjusted by 27 cm, and the foot pedals mechanically adjusted. The seat back features a flexible hydraulic shock absorber for added comfort.
The high quality of HATLAPA’s products has enabled the German-based exporter to create long term working relationships with other global organisations. The foundation of the brilliant relationship between HATLAPA and SMATCO comes down to the combination of the companies’ main advantages. The two industry players have a combined amount of 140 years of know-how and expertise from their respective employees. This type of co-operation is also reflected in the way that HATLAPA works with its other partners and customers in order to ensure maximum success in all activities.