The Cost Crisis and How to Make Maintenance as Cost-Efficient as Possible

Everything is on the rise, so maintaining large production plants and industrial sites can seem not only overwhelming but completely unaffordable. Unfortunately, as a result, many choose to ignore regular maintenance, focusing their tight budget elsewhere, only to incur greater costs later when extensive, unexpected, but fully preventable faults stop production completely, forcing urgent (and most likely very expensive) repair.

What makes Cygnus Instruments a highly cost-efficient solution?

Cygnus Ultrasonic Thickness Gauges are all designed to achieve the key Asset Integrity Management (AIM) goals for inspection and maintenance: accuracy, speed, and usability – both on the surface and underwater. This makes the perfect recipe for achieving the greatest time AND cost efficiency (both go hand-in-hand), as neither is wasted on error or operational difficulty.

The Cygnus ROV UTM Deep Water Ultrasonic Thickness Gauge, Cygnus’ latest NDT equipment release for subsea, demonstrates this superbly.

This dedicated ROV mountable, highly intelligent instrument is the only ROV UT Gauge with live A-scan, specifically designed to measure metal thickness in the harshest subsea operating conditions at an impressive depth of up to 3,000m. It performs Class surveys and subsea inspection, repair, and maintenance (IRM) ofoffshore infrastructure and underwater equipment including:

• Oil & Gas platforms;

• Marine structures;

• Offshore wind turbines;

• Underwater pipelines;

• Civil engineering infrastructure.

If time is money, how does Cygnus ROV UTM aid cost reduction in maintenance?

Amongst its many talents, including being extremely intuitive and easy to use, Cygnus ROV UTM has an extra little trick up its sleeve. The P50 Probe Handler is cleverly designed to self-align the ultrasonic probe onto straight pipes, from 50mm/1.97in diameter to flat surfaces. The spring-loaded probe and V-shaped block ensure the probe is positioned correctly and accommodates different pipe diameters, and the gimbal allows the probe to move to align onto the straight pipe surface when used with an ROV manipulator arm.

In often poor visibility environments, alignment can be extremely tricky and time-consuming, so under the watchful eye of the client this saves precious time and money.

Once the probe is sitting correctly on the surface, the speed of the process is assisted by the automatic selection of an optimal measuring mode for the best results; quick and reliable measurements are attained by visual verification of measurements through live A-scan.

Avoiding high and unexpected repair costs

With speed as one of its core strengths, the ROV UTM boasts a high-performance piezo composite probe, solid-state electronics and CygLink software for real-time topside display, data logging and reporting - making it a highly efficient and extremely reliable method of testing, and therefore a viable solution for committing to a regular maintenance schedule. This routine observation will ensure safety requirements are not only met but allows weaknesses in structural integrity to be identified early, mapped, and predicted – preventing unexpected, costly

downtime and repair bills.

Working its magic in the background, so production is not affected

Another key trait of all Cygnus gauges is their ability to conduct in-service inspections without a shutdown. With operations able to continue undisturbed, no money or hours are lost. What’s more, the Cygnus’ Multiple-Echo or Echo-Echo measuring modes facilitate through-coat measurements as specified by Classification Societies, saving you precious time removing coatings!

The value in maximising equipment longevity

Regular structural maintenance is no longer just essential, but incredibly valuable because it is the best method for achieving the greatest longevity in equipment and infrastructure. Extending the life of assets is now a priority as material costs soar across the globe; people are looking to invest in and protect what they already have, instead of buying now largely unaffordable replacements.

By performing regular maintenance on structures, you can monitor and even predict areas of weakness, and repair them before reaching a severity that is either irreparable or at a cost that outweighs the benefit of repair.

The Cygnus ROV UTM, like all Cygnus products, is manufactured in the UK and holds the UKCA mark.

— Quote SOS22 for 10% off a gauge!