Pirtek Birmingham flushed with success at EMR

16 June, 2017

Earlier this year, EMR’s Birmingham site sought the services of a provider to carry out a complete hydraulic installation as part of the refurbishment to their material handling site. Gary Cotterell, the EMR site’s foreman, explained why Pirtek Birmingham was considered to be the best company for the task. “Four other companies tendered for the contract, but we made our choice largely on the basis that we had already worked with Pirtek Birmingham over a number of years at various EMR plants, and we knew the director Andy Connell and his team to be very efficient and knowledgeable – as well as being very local.”

Connell explained that during discussions at the time of the tendering process, Pirtek Birmingham told EMR that they planned to flush the ring main after all the hydraulics had been installed. “I believe this was another part of our overall service provision that worked in our favour in the lead-up to EMR making the final decision as to which company they wanted to undertake the project,” he said.

The project

The contract was agreed during February of this year and the installation project began in late March. The original system was completely removed and then Pirtek Birmingham set to work, installing 45 new hydraulic lines, running from the power packs to various drives and hydraulic rams on the recycling machine, using 25mm, 30mm and 38mm steel tubes.

To avoid future leaks, caused by machine vibrations, all joints were sealed using the Walform system and all hydraulic lines were fixed in place using anti-vibration clamps. Connections were made to the motor using 350 bar multi-spiral hose assemblies. Each individual line was then flushed to meet ISO standards to ensure system cleanliness prior to commissioning.

The whole project was completed within a three-week period, after which the machine became operational. “The speed of completion of the project was impressive,” said Cotterell, “but this was something we had come to expect from Pirtek Birmingham. He added that other companies that had tendered from the contract had quoted completion times of between 8 and 12 weeks.

Installation and testing

During the three-week installation period, Connell worked closely with Pirtek Birmingham’s senior service engineer, Richard Clift, who was tasked with undertaking all the steel pipework bending, fitting, hydraulic hose installation, routing and clamping before the final checking and adjusting of all the connections. Ian Cochran, Pirtek Birmingham’s hydraulic engineer, was then tasked with flushing the lines to achieve acceptable levels of cleanliness in order to prolong the life of the system; a task which tested Pirtek Birmingham’s flushing rig to full capacity, given the scale of the project. The system was commissioned and is now operational.