Architectural projects

Work has been continuing on the composite cladding for a Perth Transit Authority building throughout the last months. We are now at a stage where test fitting on site of the components is underway prior to painting and final installation.

The segments themselves are a good mix of materials combining an aluminium honeycomb core to increase panel stiffness and resistance to damage and a resin system reinforced with glass fibres that meets the demanding FST (fire, smoke, toxicity) standards required by the rail sector.

Pictured is one of the longer corner mouldings assembled in the factory confirming dimensional accuracy prior to delivery to site for test fitting.

Constant upgrades

After a fairly intensive and late round of R&D and hydrofoil prototyping. Bladerider emerged with a best placed second at the recent World International Moth Championships held at 'The Gorge' in the USA and first place at the preceding US National Championships.

During the event - which saw a range of conditions - a few of the new designs did get used in the races, most notable was the green 'tuna fin'. This particular design was conceived by Bethwaite Design who supplied the foil sections and profile plan. We completed the CAD model and oversaw the prototyping stage to deliver a part in 6 days from first contact.

Although the heavily raked leading edge design did throw up new issues and peculiarities around the race course, it adds to our knowledge base and ultimately helps us home in on improvements in performance for the future.

The work will continue on new designs and with Whisper to be launched in the coming weeks, a new round of ideas are planned to be built and tested.

1 Ton of foam

But this is no ordinary foam, is made specially for undersea applications.
We are now in the last stages of building the floatatation component for the the the new 'Typhoon' deep sea ROV.


The main float block (pictured) weighs approximately 800kg, and when the other segments are attached and fixed into place it will bring the gross weight of the floatation into the 1 ton vicinity.
When the block has been machined to final size and attached to the ROV unit, the complete ROV will be capable of sustaining depths of over 1000m for prolonged periods of time.