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News & Events |
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News & Events 
Autumn 2002 Review Click here if you wish to view the Autumn 2001 Review Click here if you wish to view the February 2000 Review
SERVICE PAYS DIVIDENDS FOR CASTLE CEMENT Castle Cement operates a number of Flender units at its site in Clitheroe, including a special Redurex KDA 400 unit that is used on a critical piece of equipment - a scrapper reclaimer chain drive - for which downtime has to be minimal otherwise costs of many thousands of pounds a day in lost production can be incurred. As Castle Cement's engineering manager David Holgate comments, the company has tried to plan ahead for every possible eventuality: "We took a good look at what we had, and Flender carried out a site survey to identify and log the units involved. We decided the Redurex was so crucial that we needed to carry a complete spare unit in our stores for rapid replacement in the event of a breakdown or for normal service requirements." Other Flender units at the plant include heavy-duty planetary gearboxes, FZG bevel helical units and lighter duty Motox geared motors. Flender was able to confirm the exact specifications of each unit and in turn retain all details at its Bradford head office, ensuring rapid service in the event of any future enquiry. It's all about thinking - and planning - ahead. FZG UNITS PROVE WORTHY AT POWER STATION
These FZGs are double reduction helical gear units in a cooling tower design, size H2NV 07, and with ratios of 10.648:1. They come complete with motor lantern, integral coupling, shaft driven flange pump and backstop, and each weigh 850 kg. Benefits of this special type of unit are the superior arrangement of the low speed bearing. A dry well arrangement prevents oil leaks and ensures better reliability. Flender also designed a special mounting flange to enable the Flender units to suit the existing mounting holes. NEW CD-ROM SHOWS PRODUCTS IN ENHANCED GRAPHICS An updated Flender Motox CD-Rom will soon be available detailing Flender units in enhanced 3-D graphics, to help you select your particular requirements more easily and allowing you to take drawings in a 3-D format. Contact us on +44 (0)1274 657700 to book your copy! Or e-mail us on sales@siemens.com and we'll get it to you as soon as it's available. FRIEDRICHSFELD FACTORY OPEN FOR BUSINESS
The old saying 'you could eat your dinner off the floor, it's that clean' was never
truer than at Friedrichsfeld, as you can see from these pictures! More importantly,
this new factory and its associated facilities are enabling us to speed up our
deliveries and improve still further on our legendary reliability.
FLENDER EXHIBITS - DATES FOR YOUR DIARY Don't miss Hillhead 2003 on 24-26 June. The Flender stand at this great show will be really rocking! Flender is also touring the UK exhibiting a range of specialised products as part of the Public Sector Exhibition series, starting at Belfast on 4 March and ending at Newcastle on 20 November. Full details are as follows:
We will be showing a wide range of our products, including the energy efficient Motox units, and look forward to seeing you! FULL RANGE OF ENERGY EFFICIENT FLENDER MOTOX UNITS NOW AVAILABLE
UK Bucks European Trend as CCL Starts to Bite In the wake of the Government's introduction of the Climate Change Levy (CCL), companies have been upgrading their geared units to comply, and Flender is now selling considerably higher numbers of eff1 units than it was at this time last year. However, an interesting fact has emerged when comparing the UK to the rest of Europe. In the big industrialised countries like France, Germany and Italy, where the CCL has not yet been enforced through penalties or incentives, companies are continuing to specify eff2 units, and eff1 sales are much slower. A recent survey carried out by CEMAP (the organisation representing Europe's motor makers) shows eff2 sales at 80% and eff1 sales at 20%; and of this latter figure, most are being sold in the UK. This means that once again, the UK is ahead of its European counterparts, and Flender's Paul Dudley makes this observation: "In the UK the end user is driving sales of eff1, and over half our sales are via this type of customer. With OEMs it's less, unless specified by the end user." FLENDER SUPPLIES GEAR UNIT TO REFURBISHED WATER MILL
Redbournbury Water Mill near St Albans is based on the site of a Domesday mill,
so flour has been ground there for a thousand years. Once belonging to the
Abbey of St Albans, and seized by Henry VIII when he dissolved the monasteries
in 1539, it remained mostly in Crown hands with tenant millers until 1987 when
it was sold to the present owners. Damaged by fire that year, it was fully restored
with a grant from English Heritage and now contains many artefacts from local
museums and mills.
Flender gave the Motox-N Z88 gear unit to the mill in response to a plea for help
from the volunteers who have been carefully restoring the mill over a 10-year
period. Due to many years of over-abstraction, the mill stream in the Ver Valley
was no longer sufficient to run the water wheel on its own, especially in summer,
and so a large 1935 Crossley oil engine was obtained and restored to run the
mill whenever the river was low. The Flender gear unit has been positioned with
the motor inside the mill, whilst the engine outside the mill drives the generator.
The Crossley single cylinder engine is rated 55 bhp at 270 rpm and weighs 4 1 /2
tonnes. In contrast, the Flender Motox-N weighs just 203 kg, with power rated
at 15kW, speed 301 rpm and gear ratio 4.87:1.
Justin James is a member of the restoration team and part owner of the mill. He commented on the donation: "The Flender unit has been one of a number of generous contributions, and is working brilliantly! Without it we would not be in the position we are today; making several tonnes of organic stoneground flour which we sell at a small profit, and more importantly enabling people to view a real mill in motion."
CONVEYOR UNITS SUPPLIED TO PORT OF MUUGA
The gear units, which are all bevel helical FZGs in a shaft-mounted design with shrink discs, have been fitted with a range of motor powers from 15kW to 90kW. Two have an integral inspection drive - a separate slow speed drive to help regular maintenance via visual checks of the belts. Four of the units are Flender size 2s, two are size 3s, two are size 4s, two are size 5s and two are size 13s (the largest size on this contract). Most are fitted with Flender Fludex input couplings and all are designed to cope with extremely low ambient temperatures at the port - minus 37°C - through the fitting of integral heaters. The conveyors are all housed in gantries and will transport granular fertiliser prills - a by-product of the petro-chemical industry - that have come in by rail wagon from Russia to temporary storage in four 40-metre diameter dome silos before being transported onto ships via 12 conveyors. A key requirement of the contract was self-cleaning material handling equipment, as well as the capability of handling hygroscopic and often highly corrosive fertilisers. AS-C's Project Manager Graham Davies described the complexities of the job: "As the material being handled is fertiliser additional safety requirements were necessary; it was therefore essential that non-explosive drive equipment be used. We are very pleased with the units and parts of the project are already up and running." ALEX DOBBIE RETIRES AFTER 49 YEARS IN ENGINEERING
After an incredible 49 years in engineering, of which he has spent the last 35 specialising in power transmission products, Alex has found himself working for three companies either with Yorkshire bases or Yorkshire offices, yet has managed to remain in Scotland throughout - quite a feat! Originally from Motherwell, and still living in Wishaw, Alex went to engineering
college at Coatbridge and from there joined the steel Despite finding more time on his hands after February, Alex will have no shortage of things to do with his family, and he also enjoys bowling and watercolour painting. We wish him a happy - and busy - retirement! In line with our expanding service support, and after the tremendous success we have achieved in this area over the last 18 months, we have transferred Allen Muffett across to our service side to join Gary Husband in focusing more closely on key industries in this area. Allen becomes Service Sales Manager for Flender Service in the Northern region, covering northern England and Scotland. He comments: "There are a lot of Flender units out there with end users, many of which will have come from abroad with OEM equipment. We want to let end users know about Flender Service, and about the fact that getting these units serviced by the original manufacturer using Flender trained engineers with access to genuine parts and setting specifications is the most cost effective way of guaranteeing Flender plant availability." The expanded scope of Flender Service is already proving very popular in the wind turbine, cement, paper and power station industries, where downtime can generate huge costs and must be crucially minimised. Flender engineers either travel to site or service units at the factory, and are also able to provide an important diagnostic service, which can prevent downtime altogether. Already proving of significant advantage to Flender customers is the company's GearController mobile data logger for condition monitoring, such as vibration velocity analysis, acceleration analysis, envelope curve analysis or band and trend analysis of bearings and gears. Ring Allen Muffett or Gary Husband on +44 (0)1274 657700 for a free site survey
by Flender Service. |
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Our legendary FZG helical units have always been sound purchases to customers
in the power industry, thanks to the FZG's excellent torque characteristics,
impressive all-round performance and outstanding reliability in all conditions.
Flender's Friedrichsfeld factory is an impressive new facility that is now fully
operational. It is the flagship for Flender's assembly of a range of heavy gearboxes
and also its main production lines of wind turbine units, as well as large gearboxes
for other industries such as cement and plastics extrusion.
Flender now has stocks of all sizes and types of Motox-N unit, including the high
efficiency eff1 units and braked eff1 units. The Motox-N range includes helical
bevel, helical worm and helical in-line geared motors. Also, with effect from
January 2003 Flender Motox will be able to supply gear units and motors in
accordance with the latest ATEX 100 directive. 
Flender has donated a Motox gear unit to an 18th century water mill that has
been restored to full working order, and which now sells the flour it grinds!
Flender has supplied 12 conveyor drives to DBT Company's Port of Muuga
fertiliser export facility in Estonia, for dry bulk handling specialist AS-C Materials
Handling Ltd of Stockport, England.
Scottish sales manager Alex Dobbie is officially retiring at the end of February
2003, but admits he'll find it hard to let go, and we don't somehow think we'll
have heard the last of him!
He then did two years' National Service with the Cameronian Scottish
Rifles, after which he joined Rolls Royce Engineering in Hamilton. In 1967 he
joined David Brown Gear Industries in Glasgow, spending 11 years there until
joining Holset Engineering (ironically another Yorkshire based company) until 1983.
In February 2003 he will have spent 20 years at Flender, and has managed during
all this time to remain based in Scotland. Alex sums up his career as only Alex
could: "I've enjoyed every minute of it!"