Reid & Mitchell (R&M) recently greatly extended and enhanced its production and processing capacity at it Benoni works by installing and commissioning a range of state-of-the-art equipment used in the repair and refurbishment of large rotating machines.
“We were fortunate in being afforded the opportunity to acquire this equipment after the international company that owned it disinvested. This opportunity was doubly fortunate for us because not only is the equipment very modern and technically advanced, but it has hardly been used – it’s as good as new,” enthused Rene Rajzman, R&M’s Operations Executive.
“In most instances the newly-acquired equipment represents a substantial technological advance on the technology we currently have in use, so enabling us not only to increase and speed up our output to enhance the efficiencies of the applicable processes, but also and importantly further enhance product quality,” he pointed out.
The new equipment, all dealing with various aspects of AC machine component manufacturing, includes:
- A fully automated Vacuum Pressure Impregnation (VPI) plant and two fully automated roll-bake curing ovens. “These are substantially larger and more automated than our existing VPI plant and ovens. They greatly increase our throughput and size capacities and enable us to now do VPI processing in-house of larger motors and stators than previously, when we had to send them elsewhere for this work to be done,” said Rene.
- A state-of-the-art CNC coil spreading machine, which greatly increases and speeds up R&M’s existing coil-winding capabilities.
- A set of winding tables that are fully electro-hydraulically operated. ”These further increase our winding capacity and make it speedier, as they automatically turn the windings, which represents a big upgrade in our winding department. They also make the process more efficient, safer and more ergonomically sound than before,” Rene commented.
- A fully-automated taping machine, adding extra taping capacity to R&M’s existing two operator-controlled taping machines.
- A state-of-the-art coil looping machine which both increases the division’s looping capacity and enables it to perform an array of things which its existing older model looping machine doesn’t have the capacity to do.
- An induction brazing machine, which has replaced the manual flame brazing process R&M has used up to now. “The induction brazing machine has vastly improved our brazing efficiencies,” Rene remarked.
- Three overhead cranes complete with gantries, comprising a single-hoist 5t capacity crane that has been installed to utilise previously unused floor space in the division’s mechanical and electrical assessing section; plus a double-hoist 5t capacity crane and a single-hoist 4t capacity crane, which have both been installed at R&M’s storage premises on a separate site from its main workshop premises.
- Auxiliary test equipment, which include a state-of-the-art Risatti automatic winding analyser, which can perform mega testing, polarisation index testing and search testing up to 12kVA. “Our test efficiencies on these three test parameters have been greatly improved as a result of acquiring this advanced instrument, which also automatically supplies a full consolidated test report on them. It replaces three separate instruments we previously used to test each of these parameters, for which we also had to generate reports manually,” Rene stated.