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With the recent move into its new purpose-built 22,000 square foot manufacturing facility, Modulift’s Technical Director, Sue Spencer reflects on how the company has changed immeasurably since its humble beginnings in 2002.
The business started its journey in the early days by focusing on selling a new concept of Spreader Beam which moved away from traditional fixed length Spreader Beams that were cumbersome to store and transport and only available to order with long lead times, to a modular lighter-weight design that would be available from stock and easy to store or transport beams in pieces. When I was designing the initial range of sizes up to 110 tonnes capacity, I never imagined the company’s huge success 17 years later.

Sulzer supports leading aroma producer with a unique bio-based vanillin separation unit

Vanilla is one of the most popular and marketed aromas in the world, yet its global shortage is forcing food manufacturers and perfumeries to turn to cheaper, more accessible artificial alternatives. When a leading manufacturer of food, flavor and fragrance ingredients, wanted to boost the sustainability of its production process for synthetic aromas, it turned to Sulzer and its state-of-the-art separation technologies.

The typical vanilla aroma comes from one single compound, vanillin, which is among the world’s most popular plant-derived flavors and fragrances. Its annual worldwide consumption exceeds 18’ 000 tonnes (19’842 tons), yet only 0.25% comes from vanilla pods.

Winn and Coales (Denso) Ltd recently supplied SeaShield™ Systems for the protection of Marine Piles at Douglas Harbour on the Isle of Man.

The initial contract secured by BAM was for the protection of 16 Piles on Berth number 5 and Bam’s sub-contractor, Teignmouth Maritime Services installed the SeaShield 2000FD™ and Seashield 80™ Systems to the piles.

In addition to the original contract, BAM negotiated with the client to install additional protection using the SeaShield 100™ System to Walkway Piles which had been partially protected with the system several years earlier.

The New BD1000 from AirBench helps control coolant problems.

AirBench BD is a self-contained blowdown station for the removal of coolant and swarf from machined parts. An operator can simply place parts in the cabinet, lower the screen, and use the integral blow gun to clean parts using factory compressed air. An integral venturi system assists with capture of coolant and the filter system in the base of the unit is easily replaced when full.

HVAC is important where safe and healthy building conditions are regulated with respect to temperature and humidity.

Labfacility offer the following HVAC kit:

Type K Pipe Clamp Probe x2. This pipe clamp probe is suitable for measuring the surface temperature of pipes in heating and ventilating systems, refrigeration and many other pipe applications.

Velcro Thermocouple Type K. Velcro thermocouples can be used as a quick and simple method of measuring the temperature around the surface of a pipe.

Southern Manufacturing & Electronics returns to Farnborough from February 11th to 13th 2020. Fully occupying the 20,000m² Farnborough International Exhibition Centre, the show brings together an impressively broad selection of industrial technology vendors and engineering service providers, both domestic and international, in one uniquely vibrant marketplace with an extraordinarily wide appeal.

The variety of products being showcased is simply vast and covers everything from C-class, electronic and hydraulic components to the latest high-tech machine tools. Not to mention every kind of hand tool, workshop essential and industrial consumable.

On 5 November 2019, The Prince of Wales met representatives from NMiTE (New Model in Technology and Engineering), which aims to become the engineering university for and of the future in Hereford.

His Royal Highness met members of NMiTE during a visit to Herefordshire based technology company, ETL Systems. The visit included meeting NMiTE’s President and Chief Executive Officer, Professor Elena Rodriguez-Falcon, NMiTE Trial Learner Samuel Whitby and ETL staff, as well as touring ETL’s factory and unveiling a commemorative plaque.

A range of hand-held, easy-to-use stroboscopes that enables the visual inspection of rotating equipment to be carried out in an economic and timely fashion has been unveiled by SKF.

All rotating equipment needs to be inspected periodically to ensure that it is working correctly. Sylvain Humbert, Product Development Manager at SKF says: “If visual inspection is not carried out, machine damage can be overlooked and unexpected breakdowns can occur. With visual inspection, problems can be detected and preventive measures can be planned and taken.”

However, machinery often must be shut down to allow visual inspection to take place, interrupting vital operations and causing costly downtime.

SKF’s TKRS stroboscopes enable visual inspections to be carried out on equipment while it is rotating. The hand-held devices emit flashes of light timed to coincide with the speed of the running machine, creating an optical effect whereby the moving parts appear to be permanently frozen in place. This allows visual inspection to take place.

Matching the timing of the strobe effect with the machinery to be inspected can be tricky using some stroboscopes. By contrast, all TKRS stroboscopes are quick and easy to set-up and use. Users of TKRS stroboscopes can change the frequency with which the stroboscope flashes to match with the speed of the rotating machine simply by turning a rotary control wheel with their thumb.

Advanced TKRS stroboscopes, meanwhile, use lasers to detect the speed of the machinery and feature a built-in trigger input that can receive signals from machines that express their rotation speed. These features enable their flash frequencies to be synchronised automatically.

Through the use energy-efficient light-emitting diodes (LEDs), the TKRS range of stroboscopes are some of the brightest hand-held options on the market, which enables the user to view the rotating equipment with a high degree of clarity. Importantly, this brightness is achieved without having to increase the duration of the flashes, which can generate blurriness in the frozen image.

The compact and ergonomic design of the stroboscopes ensures that they can be carried conveniently in a pocket or toolbox. Furthermore, they feature large user interfaces that are simple to use yet provide access to a wide range of features and settings.

The TKRS range comprises four stroboscopes with differing levels of functionality. These are:

TKRS 11, a compact and affordable LED stroboscope;
TKRS 21, a compact yet high-power LED stroboscope;
TRKS 31, a compact advanced LED/laser stroboscope; and
TKRS 41, a high-performance LED stroboscope.

Jens Kammann, Marketing Manager says: “The TKRS range has been designed so that we can offer our customers an efficient and easy-to-use stroboscope, no matter their budget.”

The TKRS range is suitable for general maintenance tasks, including inspection of couplings, fan blades, gears, belts, chains and more. However, the stroboscopes also may be used for advanced production quality control and visual vibration analysis.

For more information visit:
www.skf.com

Over half of European manufacturers are implementing AI use cases in the sector with Germany a frontrunner on 69% AI adoption versus US at 28% and China at 11%
A new report from the Capgemini Research Institute highlights that the European market is leading in terms of implementing Artificial Intelligence (AI) in manufacturing operations. 51% of top global manufacturers in Europe are implementing at least one AI use case. The research also analyzed 22 AI use cases in operations and found that manufacturers can focus on three use cases to kickstart their AI journey: intelligent maintenance, product quality control, and demand planning.

The British Compressed Air Society (BCAS) and Primary Engineer are proud to announce this year’s recipient of the BCAS Rogers Knight Award 2019 as Allan Crawford from ARC Ltd.

The award is presented each year at the annual BCAS charity ball to an engineering professional in recognition of the impact he or she has had working with pupils and teachers as part of the Primary Engineer programmes. The not-for-profit organisation aims to inspire the next generation of young engineers through whole class project work with teachers and engineers, competitions and exhibitions.

Open to all teachers across the UK to nominate their partner engineer, the Rogers Knight Award sees hundreds of entries each year, from which the BCAS Board selects just one winner. 

Allan Crawford was nominated by Colette Kilpatrick from St. Nicholas Roman Catholic School in East Lothian, where he has been visiting the children for many years to talk about his work as a mechanical engineer and the huge variety of vocations available within this disciple.