In early July TLA Subsea achieved another major milestone with the assembly and function test of the prototype tensioner.
All machined components for the drum and carriage and have been received from Quest Precision Engineering and have been assembled
The drum locking pins, ratchet mechanism and ROV Class 4 buckets & square drives were then installed before lifting the carriage onto the sub base that was fabricated by Hydrus Energy Engineering. The shafts and pillow blocks were then installedThe screw and gearbox that is used to drive the carriage back and fore was then installed and the carriage successfully function tested
We are having some components re-machined to accommodate the load cell and we are also waiting for some items to be machined to permit our tensioner to be installed onto a 25Te test eye. Once in receipt of these items we shall be undertaking an extensive test programme to simulate service conditions.
We are progressing well on the design of the production tensioner and the gravity base. The gravity base is a simple design and we have endeavoured to incorporate all the moving parts into the tensioner. This means that if any maintenance or repairs are necessary then the tensioner can be recovered without the need to recover the gravity base.
