African Fusion

Positioners and wind solutions

AFRICAN FUSION

August 2015

he Kistler Machine Company was

founded back in 1966 by senior

engineer Roland Kistler, the

father of current CEO, Alexander: “My

father, a mechanical engineer, came

up with an idea for a pipe rotator for

welding pipe spools with elbows and

flanges. His idea was to clamp the pipe

and rotate the entirepipe section so that

the seam could be welded in the 12:00

o’clock position. This makes welding

easier for the welder and significantly

improves weld quality and fabrication

productivity,” begins Kistler. “For a re-

finery, for example, a lot of complicated

pipework has to be fabri-

cated with Y-junctions, el-

bows, bends and flanges,

andmy father’s ideawas to

automate thesewelding tasks,” he adds.

Conventional wheeled rotators rely

on four points of contact underneath

the component. “But if an offset or

eccentric weight is being rotated, then

the component will slip on these rollers

as the weight begins to rise, making

it impossible to complete a rotation

safely at a controlled speed. My father

designed a rotator with three wheels,

twobelowanda third clamping onto the

topof theweldment. This enables an ec-

centric weight to be rotated 360°, safely

and under accurate speed control. This

development enabled the welding of

complex components to be automated,

because the systemcan compensate for

offset loads and the drive torques can

be continuously adjusted to achieve

constant travel speeds,” he explains.

From this initial idea, the company

quickly began to add other positioners

and rotators to meet the specific weld-

ing needs of fabricators. Today, Kistler

supplies standard equipment such

as positioners, turning rolls and

manipulators and designs and

manufactures turnkey automation

equipment according to custom-

er’s specific fabrication needs.

Alexander Kistler took

over from his father after

finishing his studies as a me-

chanical engineer in 1989.

“Then in 2000, ourmain competi-

tor, Bodewent bankrupt andwe

purchased the intellectual

property rights and the

Bode name. This was

a breakthrough for us,

because it gave us ac-

cess to a large portfo-

lio of machines and

a substantial global

customer base,” he

says. “Today, we

continue to manufac-

Kistler Cutting and Welding Techniques, a Ger-

man family business that engineers and manu-

factures welding positioning and cutting sys-

tems, alongwith its South Africandistributor,

Mazuret, exhibited its offering earlier this

year at the Clean Energy Africa conference in

Cape Town.

African Fusion

talks to Alexander

Kistler, the company’s CEO.

Roland Kistler, Alexander

Kistler’s father, designed a

rotator with three wheels,

two below and a third

clamping onto the top

of the weldment. This

enables an eccentric

weight to be rotated

360°, safely and

under accurate

speed control.

For the fabrication of wind tower sections,

Kistler supplies plate seam-welding

systems, rotating equipment and the

column and boom systems necessary

for submerged arc welding of the cans

and sections. Helvert’s four-wire welding

systems can be used to deposit up to 45 kg

of weld metal per hour.

Turnkey welding productivity

ture Bode machines and we have

retained the well-known Bode name.

But the machines now come out of the

Kistler factory in Bad Saulgau in the

South of Germany, 60 km north of Lake

Constance on the Swiss border,” Kistler

tells

African Fusion

Alexander Kistler first came to South

Africa after Andrew Masuret of Mazolu-

tions contacted the company in 2008

with a refurbishment application for Se-

cunda. “We engineered, manufactured

and supplied a turnkey automation

system for recladding conical ashlock

vessels for the petrochemical industry

in Secunda,” he relates. “These were

being done manually at that time, in

unpleasant conditions. The vesselswere

preheated to 120 °C, with the welder

having to work inside the cone. Using

our rotating expertise, we developed a

fully automated system that significant-

ly reduces the health risks. Welding is

nowbeing done using Lincoln’s twin-arc

submerged-arc process. The rotator tilts

the conical vessel to enable welding in

the 12:00 o’clock position across the ta-

pered internal surface, and some clever

automation changes the rotation speed

so that the linear travel speed remains

constant for an even layer thickness and