ExMac has acquired additional premises in Redditch to expand our facility for factory acceptance testing as a result of our recent success in securing orders with Jaguar Land Rover.

Nuvia factory test

One of the companies supporting UKAEA is Nuvia Limited (formerly NUKEM Limited).  Nuvia offers an extensive engineering design resource for the nuclear industry ranging from new build plant for radioactive and hazardous environments, shielded facilities and containment systems, and treatment plants for solid and liquid active waste in addition to extensive radiation safety and consulting expertise.

Nuvia has been awarded a contract to design and build a nuclear waste encapsulation facility at the site, which has included an ExMac Automation conveyor system designed to transport stainless steel drums containing intermediate-level radioactive waste (ILW) through the process.

The drums, which are 800mm in diameter, 1200mm high and weigh up to 1000kg, are loaded onto the conveyor system from an existing drum storage facility. The conveyor system then transports the drums through the process, which involves drum inspection followed by grout filling of the drums, before transporting them back to the existing storage facility. During the process the weight of the drums increases to a maximum of 2000kg.

The Nuvia specification required the contact surface of the ExMac conveyors to be stainless steel. To meet this specification, ExMac designed a bespoke handling system consisting of sets of powered roller conveyors fitted with stainless steel tube rollers and side guides; and cross-chain transfer units having stainless steel pads fixed to the chains. The rectangular conveyor system layout carries drums inside a ‘cell’ with a concrete roof and walls. As the drive motors are located outside the cell, each of the conveyors is fitted with a through-wall drive to enable the drive shaft and coupling of the motor gearbox to connect to the conveyor chains that drive the rollers. The support structure of the conveyors and any equipment that is not in contact with the drums, are manufactured from carbon steel and finished with a special paint.

Because the cell is a restricted area ExMac has also designed and supplied a drum removal system consisting of a hand operated cable winch recovery bogie and hydraulic cylinder-driven drum pushers. In the event of a conveyor breakdown, the drum pushers are extended through the walls in order to push drums into a position where they can be transferred to the existing storage facility.

Proving all components and the system itself off-site was also a key requirement of the contract. This involved ExMac testing a sample of the conveyor drive system to ensure that the lubricant free drive chains used ‘incell’ were fit for purpose and could be approved. The system was then made and assembled in Worcester and laid out in the company’s workshops. Each item of equipment underwent a unit trial, which was then followed by a total factory acceptance test and buy-off by both Nuvia and its customer UKAEA. The whole system was then stripped down, packed, itemised, and delivered to site, where it was installed by Nuvia.

Commenting for Nuvia, design manager Andy Blue says: “ExMac Automation was involved in the project from the start, and the input of its design and engineering team on the conveying system was invaluable. The installation itself also went very smoothly and we were delighted with the result.

JCB, the family owned manufacturer of construction, agricultural and groundcare machinery produces over 300 different products on 5 continents in some of the world’s finest engineering factories.

JCB CAB Slat Conveyor

The company’s Cab Systems business in Rugeley, Staffordshire, which manufactures cabs for other plants within JCB, has recently completed an assembly facility housing two new automated cab finishing lines designed to produce fully trimmed cabs for JCB’s Backhoe and Loadall ranges. The conveyor systems for both lines were designed and manufactured by Excel Automation, the UK’s leading supplier of material handling equipment.

The Backhoe line is 80m long with 21 stations. It features accumulating conveyors at the load and unload ends to allow buffering and operates at an approximate speed of one metre per minute.  The Loadall line has 20 stations, is 71m long and operates at slightly less than one metre per minute. It is also equipped with accumulating conveyors at load and unload ends to allow buffering. In addition, the Loadall line features a shuttle car system powered by an inductive loop. This provides an extremely neat solution as there is no solid conveyor forming a barrier across the assembly shop, and no power feed centenary system or loose dangling wires.

JCB CAB Slat Conveyor

The design for both lines began in September 2006. Commissioning was carried out in two stages, with the Backhoe installation completed in Mar 2007 and the Loadall line during JCB’s September shutdown.

Commenting on the service and support provided by ExMac Automation, JCB’s Project Manufacturing Engineer Steve Cartwright says: “Excel was very responsive to the pressures of the programme, and the input from its engineering team ensured that from design to manufacture we received exactly the systems we specified.”

The fully finished cabs produced on the new lines are delivered to the main JCB assembly plant in Rocester. This plant had previously been supplied with cab variants from Rugeley, which were then configured and trimmed on its own trim lines to suit particular customer requirements.  Now the Rocester plant simply unloads fully trimmed Backhoe and Loadall cabs from transporters and fits them to the machines on its assembly lines.

Says Steve Cartwright: “The lines previously used at Rocester for final cab trim now provide additional production capacity to build Loadall and Backhoe machines.”