New Zealander achieves international accolade

Industrial Agents and Services Ltd managing director Geoff Faithfull has been presented with a plaque and the world’s first gold micrometer by Mitutoyo at a special ceremony in Singapore recently.

The award was made to honour Industrial Agents and Services’ (IA&S) work in the precision instrument field over the last 26 years.

Mitutoyo Precision Measuring Instruments is the world’s largest manufacturer of precision measuring equipment, with 90 to 95 percent of its products made in Japan. The Mitutoyo policy is to continually update and improve their products through extensive research and development. The company says that with this superior technology it will always be at the forefront in the precision measurement industry.

IA&S is Mitutoyo’s authorised distributor in New Zealand, and new IA&S general manager Stephen Browne is committed to ensuring the latest technological advances in precision measurement are readily available to the New Zealand market. The three products shown above are just a small selection of the range of new product releases and upgrades.

Mitutoyo is proud to release the coolant proof Quantumike Series, winner of the Good Design Award in Japan. It has revolutionary advancement in micrometer technology with 2mm of spindle feed for every thimble rotation. This means rotation is four times faster than a conventional micrometer.

The Quantumike Series has an IP 65 coolant rating, and its patented ratchet thimble mechanism helps ensure repeatable measurements. Measurements are made to accuracy of + or -0.001mm/00005 inch on up to 50mm range. It is available ex stock in 0.25mm/1 inch or 25-50mm/1 inch to 2 inch ranges with or without data output function.

Larger sizes are available on an indent basis. Mitutoyo has released the world’s first high accuracy digital micrometer with resolutions of 0.0001mm. It has a range of features to allow flexible measurement such as switchable resolutions: 0.0001mm, 0.0005mm, 0.00002 inch, 0.000005 inch. Functions include pre-set, zero setting, hold, resolution switching, function lock, on/off, data output and error alarm.

Body heat transferred to the instrument is reduced by a heat shield, minimising error caused by thermal expansion. An ABS rotary sensor eliminates need to perform origin setting each time power is turned on, letting you start measuring immediately.

IA&S says it is ideal for customers who need to make highly accurate measurements with a hand held tool.

Another recent Mitutoyo release is the world’s first solar powered digital indicator, which is easy to use with just two large buttons for all necessary functions. It has a range of 12.70mm and resolutions of either 0.01mm or 0.001mm. It is eco-friendly, and does not require batteries, and has a low operational luminous intensity of 40 lux – less lighting intensity than an emergency staircase.

The solar powered digital indicator incorporates an inspection certificate to guarantee every product shipped is of high quality.

Top workshop turns skills to fresh fields

Stevenson Engineering has analysed how it can best use its machinery and the skills of its staff in the changed marketplace of the second decade of the 21st Century. PHIL WHYTE reports on where the company is headed.

Stevenson Engineering has undergone a partial transformation as it meets the changed environment of the post global financial crisis trading environment.

Visitors to the company’s workshop in Auckland’s East Tamaki will still see the big mobile gear that the company has a great reputation for servicing. However, Stevenson Engineering’s work is no longer confined to that facility and mobile field servicing.

Stevenson Engineering began as Stevenson Group’s workshop back in the days when the big mining gear at Kopuku (now Kopaka), Maramarua — and later Ohai and other South Island mines — needed regular attention, as did the company’s ready mixed concrete and concrete products plant and fleet. Then there was quarry and construction gear, and equipment associated the company’s farms, including the 14,000ha Lochinver station on the Napier-Taupo highway.

Parent company Stevenson Group has passed its centennial, and has built up a reputation for its expertise as one of New Zealand’s largest, most efficient and well-equipped private companies. This philosophy has always extended to the workshop. Constantly updated top of the line equipment is a feature of the multi-bay facility, and clients began to benefit from this when the workshop began to take on client projects. For instance there is the largest hydraulic cylinder hone in the country and several other articles of plant which are unique in New Zealand, including a massive twin-head computer controlled sub arc welder for roll reclamation.

Stevenson Engineering’s repositioning means its 140 highly qualified staff are often to be found outside the workshop, throughout New Zealand and at overseas locations, working on fixed plant maintenance, or doing special projects for large customers. The workshop is still fully utilised – and had a D9, a large excavator, a new mining machine and various other plant being serviced and/or rebuilt when New Zealand Engineering News visited — but is now only part of the wider operation. Its equipment comes in very handy when an item from one of its offsite jobs has to be rebuilt or worked on by special machinery.

“Staff are the core of our business, and we’re proud of our reputation among our peers for selecting and training up apprentices, in association with MITO,” says Stevenson Engineering operations manager David Young.

“Many of those apprentices go on to become long-serving employees.

“Our staff retention is something we pride ourselves on. There’s nothing better than being able to send a group of mechanics out on a job and be confident that no one else could do it better.”

Mr Young also points to Stevenson Engineering’s proud health and safety record, which recently included a 710-day lost time injury-free (LTI-Free) period.

Stevenson Engineering is qualified to work on everything from the largest fixed plant or mobile equipment down to the small roadside plant the company services for a contracting industry client.

The company has an Enviromark Diamond Award. It is also ISO 9001 audited and is an underground diesel registered service facility to meet AS/NZS 3584 – one of very few companies in Australia or New Zealand to have achieved this accreditation. The audit for this was one of the most stringent Stevenson has ever undertaken, according to Mr Young.

The company also has on-site engineering designers, and so is equipped to take any project from concept to completion.

In particular, clients take advantage of Stevenson Engineering’s top reputation for work on hydraulic systems. For instance this has led to Stevenson Engineering building up a strong client base in recycling and the scrap industry, where it specialises in rebuilding all types of balers and sheers.

“Stevenson is a one-stop shop for us,” says Nick Baker, Visy general manager – NZ recycling.

”In the past we shopped around machine shops for requirements like maintenance and supply of hydraulic rams, valves, and repairs to the main platen. Then we had to co-ordinate all the work.

“We decided that we didn’t want this, and turned the project management over to Stevenson, which is also able to fabricate any item we need.”

The company also has a strong reputation in maintenance of heavy industrial plant, heavy transport, civil construction and other heavy equipment fleet maintenance. It is prominent in the extractive industries, with the Group’s own quarrying activities and work in both opencast and underground mining as well as work for clients.

Stevenson Engineering has major contracts with New Zealand Steel at its Glenbrook plant. This involves rebuilding and refurbishing forming rolls, hydraulic cylinder and maintenance shop work with other highly competent smaller teams working to reinforce the client’s regular workforce.

As well Stevenson Engineering runs New Zealand Steel subsidiary Steltech in Takanini. Steltech’s speciality is structural anvil bridge beam construction.

“Steltech manufactures members to almost any size, shape or length. So we give engineers the freedom to design the perfectly optimised beam for any application,” the company says.

By contrast with imported hot rolled sections, Steltech’s engineers size the members to meet the critical load, often achieving weight savings of 25-30 percent over hot rolled beams, and this reflects through to substantial cost savings.

This is a specialist welding shop and Stevenson provides a group of top welders on the shop floor, as well as having staff working in other specialist areas of the company.

Stevenson Engineering business development manager Gary Richmond says the company also had top tradesmen located at Earnscleugh, McMahon, Takanini Concrete and Oceana Gold HWE in recent times. The company’s coal mining experience stands it in good stead, and it continues to supply its expertise to mines on the West Coast and elsewhere.

Stevenson Engineering is a company which has over many years built up an excellent reputation with its workshop. But now the company has re-assessed the marketplace of 2013 and beyond, and its potential to make the most of the 21st Century. It is constantly finding new clients for its skills and expertise, and the future is looking very bright indeed.

Big-time oil and grease

Ports of Auckland ship-to-shore cranes play their part in oiling the Auckland economy, by unloading goods from ships as quickly and effectively as possible.

Until recently, crane parts were greased manually. Because access to grease points was often awkward there was no guarantee that every part of the crane was receiving the required amount of oil, and this led to a greater risk of breakdown from bearing failures.

Reducing downtime for repairs of these cranes is vital. There are over 1000 grease points on the five cranes, three of which weigh 1250 tonnes while the other two weigh 1150 tonnes.

Ports of Auckland (PoA) approached Stevenson Engineering to provide a solution that would automate the oil supply. Stevenson field service mechanic Greg Donald launched into R&D more to address this particularly challenging problem.

“Greg’s knowledge and research skills have been a key factor in the success of the job,” says Stevenson field service supervisor Kevin Hickey.

“He sourced the best available system on the market, and Stevenson Engineering designed and added additional componentry to ensure that the system would effectively integrate with the cranes’ operations.”

Installation was completed last year, with four Stevenson staff working on the job at any one time. One of the project’s challenges was gaining access to the cranes between unloading schedules.

“We offered the flexibility to go on site at short notice and the capacity to work six days a week as required,” says Kevin.

“We’ve drawn on the pool of experience and expertise at Stevenson Engineering to tackle this project. We’ve been able to get the best result by making components in-house, using our machine shop for fabrication. We’ve also been able to provide staff that are certified to work at heights. This has been essential as our team members have sometimes been working at heights of up to 50 metres.”

“We chose Stevenson Engineering for this project because of their extensive background in maintaining fleet equipment,” says PoA operations engineer John Miller.

“We wanted to tap into their experience in preventative maintenance. We were confident that Stevenson had undertaken a thorough investigation into the best solution to our problem. They selected the right equipment, designed it, worked it and followed through from beginning to end, providing a very high-quality installation.

“We’ve appreciated having Stevenson’s Greg Donald as a leading hand. He took ownership of the project, from investigation and planning to overseeing the installation. It’s now faster, safer and more effective to service the cranes. Oil is added automatically when the machine is working.”

The new automated system ensures that all parts of the cranes are greased. PoA has a preventative maintenance system that minimises future crane downtime.

LED technology lights new engineering workshop

Using the latest in energy-saving LED lighting technology, Philips Lighting New Zealand has fitted out the new Pegasus Engineering premises at the Izone Business Park in Christchurch.

Working with Arnold Jensen Electrical, Philips Lighting New Zealand developed a lighting design concept for the workshop and loading bay using the latest Philips LED lighting technology.

“Pegasus Engineering is expanding and hiring more staff. They needed to expand their premises to accommodate a growing company and they wanted the building to have a modernised feel. Through the use of selected Philips LED technology, Pegasus Engineering was able to achieve this, while also reducing maintenance costs”, says Tony Robinson of Arnold Jensen Electrical.

Two different types of Philips Lighting products were used in the new building: Philips Mini 500 LED and GreenPerform LED high bay lighting. These products were selected as they deliver significant energy savings and have low maintenance costs, making a valuable contribution to the business, while reducing the company’s carbon footprint.

The lighting increases visibility, which was a requirement for Pegasus Engineering’s warehouse, in the interests of health and safety. Through precision-controlled optics, the light can be directed exactly where it is needed. There has been very positive feedback from Pegasus staff on the superior lighting levels and reduced glare in the workplace.

“The new lighting will deliver lighting energy savings of nearly 50 percent a year and enable Pegasus Engineering to access EECA subsidies designed to encourage business uptake of energy efficient lighting”, said Allan Stephenson of Philips Lighting New Zealand.

EECA has found that switching to energy efficient lighting provides one of the best returns on investment for companies looking to reduce their energy use.

Pegasus Engineering owner Gavin Lawry says: “Philips took all the hassle out of it for us by providing a complete project solution from start to finish. We are so pleased with the work that Philips has done in the warehouse, we have engaged them to upgrade our office lighting as well.”

Seco expands Turbo 10 milling cutter range

Seco has announced a substantial expansion of its highly successful family of Turbo 10 square shoulder milling cutters.

Designed to bring even greater flexibility to the product line, the expansion includes introductions of new inserts with new geometries and radii, as well as helical cutters.

The inserts are now available with corner radii ranging from 0.4mm to 3.1mm (0.016” to 0.122”). Additionally, new geometries for the range of ground inserts have been introduced to offer increased performance in materials that provide unique challenges, including aluminium, stainless steels, titanium alloys and other difficult to machine alloys.

The new Turbo 10 helical range of cutters offers manufacturers an ideal solution for helical shoulder milling applications that require process stability, flexibility and high precision. Turbo 10 helical cutters are available in diameters ranging from 20 mm to 54mm (0.75” to 2.00”) and include Weldon, Seco Weldon, Combimaster heads, Seco-Capto and Arbor mounting options.

All cutters in the Turbo 10 family include precision milled pocket seats that improve run-out, stability and tool life by providing optimal contact between the tool body and insert. Integrated through coolant channels support high productivity while also promoting excellent chip evacuation. Highly flexible, Turbo 10 cutters can be applied for slotting, shouldering, ramping, facing, pocketing, plunging and turn milling applications.

www.secotools.com

Gold does more than just glister

More effective monitoring of pollution levels in the workplace is on the horizon following the development of a new construction method for microscopic structures made of gold.

The unit of measure for nanostructures, a nanometre, is a billionth of a metre or about 1/50,000 the width of a typical human hair. Materials, including gold, engineered on this tiny scale have vastly different chemical and physical properties to those manufactured on a larger scale.

Monash University’s Associate Professor Udo Bach, his team from the Department of Materials Engineering and collaborators from CSIRO and the Australian Synchrotron have used an unconventional bottom-up strategy to fabricate nanostructures with gold nanoparticles.

The result is gold nanostructures with superior abilities that can be built into monitoring equipment to sense the presence of chemical and biological pollutants. They are 36 times more sensitive than current commercial sensing substrates. The gold nanostructures also have the ability to absorb light, which opens the way for improved absorption of solar energy into solar cells.

Two main strategies are used to fabricate nanostructures. Top-down is a conventional fabrication method where a bulk material is crafted to obtain smaller features, while the bottom-up method starts with nanoparticles to build a larger structure.

The researchers found the use of the bottom- up method gave them a new degree of freedom to control the placement of the nanoparticles.

“To exploit the full potential of novel materials, techniques need to be developed that allow us to integrate them into everyday devices such as solar panels and pollution monitoring equipment,” Professor Bach said.

“Two levels of control are critical for such techniques: the ability to integrate nanoparticles into existing structures and the ability to control the orientation of these nanometre-sized building blocks to form ordered arrays.”

Lead author and PhD candidate Thibaut Thai from the Department of Materials Engineering said the bottom-up method was like building with Lego…at the nanoscale.

“Tiny blocks of gold were joined together until the final structure was reached. Controlling the orientation of the nanorods allowed us to build more complex nanostructures,” Mr Thai said.

“By developing a way to control the assembly of the nanoparticles on surfaces, we were able to reduce the problem of integrating these nanostructures into functional applications.”

Professor Bach said the use of these new arrays of nanoparticles would not be limited to sensor applications. The research team was now focusing on developing their properties in photonic circuits, which ultimately could lead to optical computing applications.

The Melbourne Centre for Nanofabrication and the Australian Synchrotron were both crucial in the success of this project. The research findings were published in Angewandte Chemie with a Very Important Paper classification, a grading given to less than five percent of the papers the journal publishes.

For more information:
Visit: www.monash.edu.au/news/show/nanostructures

Companies mould to bring specialist tool and die engineers

The business name may be new but for Gallagher’s tool and die division, formerly Sunplas, the partnerships are well established.

The amalgamation with global identity Gallagher means a company name change for the in-house engineering facility, which for over 20 years has been responsible for project management of the design and manufacture of plastic injection moulds and pressure die casting moulds based at head office.

Supplying superior tooling for internal customers in security, animal management and fuel systems, their external customer base includes the automotive, medical and animal health industries. The division’s comprehensive experience of engineers delivers a diverse range of tooling capability from small, single cavity tools through to complex, multi-cavity tools with moving parts.

As one element of Gallagher’s contract manufacturing capabilities, the external customer base offers significant growth potential and engineering manager Mathew Bell says the existing relationships with other Gallagher business units will be a major advantage.

“Because we’re based on-site and in close proximity to other departments we can facilitate a concurrent manufacturing programme,” says Mr Bell.

“We have a flexible and open partnership with R&D and project managers, and that encourages early consultation into product design. We’re often involved from the business case level of a product’s development cycle.”

Mr Bell says the partnership is enhanced by the use of integrated CAD software, PTC Creo, which enables ongoing seamless communication between R&D mechanical engineers and tool and die engineers.

“This practice reduces project and operation costs significantly because of the reduced downtime during consultation and the resulting reduced time to market.”

Ten staff are employed fulltime within the tooling division with skills built around computer applied design and machining, CAD and CAM.

For more information:
Visit: www.gallagher.co