Korrosionsschutz für die Industrie
Telefon: 0049 – (0)4154 – 993 740 0

testing by “Germanischer Lloyd”

If you wish to use your corrosion protection products for technical installations like bridges, turbines and ships you first have to prove their efficiency.

There are only a few institutes that conduct these verifications. For shipbuilding there are just four or five in all of Germany.

The Germanic Lloyd, GL in short, is such a testing institute. The degreed engineers with the Hamburg organisation do not only check the conditions of technical installations, they also work worldwide testing products and after testing award the coveted GL certificates.

The certificates issued after the tests document the efficiency of a product. The degreed engineers of GL are known all over the world for being very conscientious in their tests. This is exactly why in the spring of 2012 we decided to have an important part of our tests monitored by GL.

     
Coating testing sheets in the TimeMAX workshop in Hamburg: To show our test is fair we also invited representatives of renown competitors.

The 45 testing sheets were selected randomly and assigned to the products. Each product is tested on three different substrates. In the row on top are corroded sheets, in the middle rust-free ones, and in the bottom row corroded ones with welding seams.

     
Punch numbers and the logo of Germanischer Lloyd. This makes sure that sheets cannot be accidentally switched during testing.

     
To avoid that the testing sheets – mounted side by side on the frame – get fogged during spraying we made a stencil from plywood. This way the other sheets are protected.

     
The same conditions for all: The drillings are deliberately added weak spots. Corrosion will attack the sheets close to the screws in particular.

     
The testing engineer from Germanischer Lloyd inspects a frame holding eight different products from shipbuilding. Two of the sheets have been coated with TimeMAX products.

We had to wait for two weeks for the products to dry out completely. Only then we took the frames to the harbour of Hamburg.

Our destination: the Chicago Express of Hapag-Lloyd. The container ship was built by Hyundai in Korea in 2006.

     
The ship is 336 metres long and can carry almost 9000 containers.

     
To prevent damaging the testing sheets during transport we made a lid for each frame.

     
Now that the corrosion protection products had time to hard-dry another measuring of the layer thickness is conducted on board as a precaution.

Deep inside the ship the frames are put up next to each other in a passageway. The testing engineer from Germanischer Lloyd takes pictures of each frame and each testing sheet.

     
Here we see the opened access to the ballast water tank. Tanks like this are located on both sides of the ship. Depending on the loading of the ship the tanks are filled with water.

The area in which our sheets are mounted is located in the so-called transition area near the top of the tank. Here the testing sheets are rarely submerged completely. Most of the time they are just above the water level and are wetted frequently by the sloshing water. On board a ship there is hardly any other area at a higher risk of corrosion.

A technical engineer from Hapag-Lloyd is always present.

     
The frames are clamped to the beams with C-clamps.

Our testing sheets were on board for more than six months and took two voyages to Asia. Important to us: during a voyage the ships of Hapag-Lloyd pass through several climate zones. This picture shows the Chicago Express at a harbour in China.

     
autumn 2012 the Chicago Express was back in Germany for a stopover. Armed with a torch we climbed down into the ballast tank. The differences in protection were easily discernible with the naked eye so we dismounted the frames and took them on deck.

     
On the way to analysis: To prevent the testing sheets from being damaged during transport to Germanischer Lloyd we built a box with push trays for our estate car.

     
Decidedly good results! On the left you see a sheet treated with out repair paint TimeMAX PAINT REPAIR.

After the long and taxing test the Germanischer Lloyd accepted and certified both our corrosion protection paint and our corrosion protection grease (see below). An important hurdle for marketing to industry has been cleared.

GL certificate

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TimeMAX GmbH & Co. KG
Nikolaus-Otto-Str. 17
D - 22946 Trittau

Telefon: +49 – (0)4154 – 993 740 0

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TimeMAX Korrosionsschutz GmbH
Nikolaus-Otto-Str. 17
D - 22946 Trittau

Telefon: +49 – (0)40 – 52 90 10 42

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