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Having spent most of my career engineering drive solutions for the Original Equipment Manufacturers I have to confess that I gave very little thought to the people that would be operating the equipment in 20 or 30 years time. Now my past has caught up with me and I have spent the last three years working with British Salt looking at ways to make the 150 plus drives at their Middlewich plant more user and environmentally friendly.
What looked well on paper and even in the workshop is perhaps not so good when it is shoehorned into miscellaneous ironmongery 50 metres from the ground.
Of the 150 gearboxes (excluding Gear motors) on site at British Salt there are nearly 40 different types from 17 different manufacturers which require a huge spares inventory or expensive fire fighting to avoid delays in production. By taking advantage of the planetary gearboxes modular construction my objective is to reduce this to variations on six basic frame sizes from a single manufacturer to cover 90% of the applications.
Both mechanical and electric drive technology has come a long way since the 60’s however pressure to keep a continuous process plant operating 24/7 affords little time to look at drive upgrades that will ultimately reduce downtime and operating costs. By working alongside the maintenance staff at British Salt it has been possible to phase in the upgrades with minimal disruption and often at lower cost
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