For some years now, mega yachts have been powered almost exclusively by pod drives. Outstanding manoeuvrability combined with very high efficiency, a smaller footprint and less installation effort makes them ideal for yacht building, among other applications.
On this project we produced the mounting flanges for the Azipods®. The yard welded in the raw flanges in a pre-aligned position. T&T then machined every face on site and marked and drilled the hole patterns.
Depending on the yacht’s design, pod drives are tilted in up to two planes to achieve maximum efficiency. The resulting angles are held to fairly tight tolerances.
Traditionally, drilling the bolt circles calls for a template, usually assembled on the flange from several parts and then aligned and fixed to specification by two or more technicians. With our Leica LaserTracker AT960 LR we do without producing and handling those consumables and centre-punch the hole positions with no additional aids and no extra hands.
