Acteon has added an extra dimension to its seabed to surface capability with the recent acquisition of Mirage Machines.
Based in Derby, UK, Mirage designs and manufactures portable on-site machine tools for a variety of applications, including cold cutting, flange facing, and drilling and tapping. The company’s engineering expertise will considerably enhance the services that Acteon offers customers, especially in such areas as wellhead installation, conductor slot recovery, pipeline intervention and well and platform decommissioning.
Mirage is a highly focused engineering company boasting an advanced 3D modelling and design capability and fully computerised, numerically controlled production facilities. Managing Director Richard Silk says that one of the company’s main drivers is to take the sort of technology normally found in fixed machines and apply it to portable equipment, thus offering users the same accuracy, speed and quality of machining on-site as they would achieve in the workshop.
The cold cutting of steel tubulars on-site is a good example. “Most of our competitors are still offering reciprocating saws for this application,” says Silk. “But this technology disappeared from workshops 20 years ago simply because it is so slow – people commonly use bandsaws these days. We have applied this technology to our range of portable machines where the challenge has been to reduce the physical size and weight of the tools. We have done this by using aircraft specification aluminium for the carriages and wheels, which not only provides great strength but also superior corrosion resistance, essential when using these tools under water.”
Mirage has also furnished its underwater tool with an automatic hydraulic system for forcing wedges into the cut to keep it open and to stop the blade jamming. In the past, users generally had to resort to slower and more expensive diamond wire cutting machines to avoid this problem.
Another area where Mirage has established a particularly strong position is tools for hot tapping into pipelines. The company’s machines are capable of working at pressures up to 15,000 psi, which is roughly 10 times higher than most of the competition. Again, the company has applied its engineering skills to come up with a lightweight, high performance machine; in this case, one that can make 36- inch-diameter cuts into a 60-inch pipeline and that weighs just 600 kg.
“A machine capable of this kind of intervention might, in the past, have been expected to weigh up to 6 t,” says Silk. “We have brought the weight down, maintained a 3-m stroke and placed the drive for the cutter at the bottom of the shaft, which overcomes the torque problems common with topdrive machines and gives a much smoother cut.”
Mirage was founded in 1993 and has grown steadily since then, expanding the range of standard tools it can offer and taking on an increasing volume of custom design work. Its success has been based heavily on engineering skills and understanding of customer requirements. However, the company has generally limited itself to supplying tools. This is likely to change in the future.
“We will gain from being linked to group companies that possess complementary skills and, moreover, that operate in areas of the offshore industry where our expertise is of particular value,” says Silk. As a result of joining Acteon, Mirage’s long-term development will be enhanced. The company will receive assistance in growing the service element of its business in key areas such as North America and the Middle East.