TPT March 2014

Technology News

Full package solutions ESTABLISHED in 1997, Axxair manu- factures machines for tube processing. The company offers full package solutions from preparation of tubes with orbital cutting machines, orbital facing tools and orbital bevelling machines, to orbital TIG welding solutions from thin wall tubes to thick wall pipes. reports that initial response from the market is promising. Axxair’s technical offering is promoted and supported by a wide range of partners around the world, and completed by its own subsidiaries. The company covers more than 40

Axxair’s GA15 bevelling motor

countries, and subsidiaries in Southeast Asia, Germany and the USA help to bring support to customers in different regions. The subsidiaries support Axxair’s distributors for servicing machines and training customers.

The company’s new GA15 bevelling motor allows bevelling of up to ½"-thick pipes in seconds through a patented carbide bevelling head. The system has been available since the Essen show in September 2013, and the company

Axxair – France Fax: +33 4 75 57 50 80 Email: commerce@axxair.com Website: www.axxair.com

Combilifts stand up to the test THE national distribution centre (NDC) of BSS Industrial stocks the equivalent of over 250 miles of tube and pipe in its 47,500ft 2 warehouse, and uses four Combilift electric C4000 EST stand-on models to ensure the efficient handling and storage of its 600+ product lines. Following BSS Industrial’s acquisition by the Travis Perkins Group at the end of 2010, it now forms part of the plumbing and heating division of Britain’s largest builders’ merchants group. The NDC operates 24-hour shifts, five days a week, to supply its 62 branches, and the Combilifts work round the clock to move around 56t of metal, stainless steel, galvanised steel and plastic tubes, rod and rail on a daily basis. manoeuvre stock around and load trucks for daily customer deliveries. They are now the standard specification for branches when forklifts need to be renewed. A key feature of this model is the set of additional hydraulically operated longer fold down forks, which contribute to health and safety procedures when offloading. The short 70mm forks are compatible with the depth of the racking arms on which goods are stored, but this makes them too short to reach across the bed of the trailer. Rather than using slings to access and lift the centrally placed bundles of tubes and pipes, the operator merely needs to activate a lever in the cab to fold down the 1,480mm- long extra forks, which can reach under the load and retract it back to the side of the trailer. The standard forks can then be redeployed to complete the offloading procedure. BSS Industrial uses Combilift’s stand-on models

An EST was initially trialled towards the end of 2012 when the contract for BSS Industrial’s previous truck fleet came to an end, and orders for three more soon followed. The machines are on contract hire from materials handling solution provider Rushlift Ltd, whose team of mobile engineers also carry out the maintenance and service on all Combilift equipment within BSS Industrial. The ST range has a very narrow cab, with stand-on or seated options, and its ability to operate in very narrow aisles makes it suitable for steel and pipe stockholding facilities such as the BSS Industrial NDC. The 4t-capacity trucks handle bundles weighing from 500kg to 2t in aisle widths of 1.8m. They are fitted with guide rollers for guided aisle operation, which enables faster travel down the aisles and reduces

BSS Industrial’s Bristol branch was the first to use one of these customised models, and branch manager Martin English is pleased with its performance: “The ability to access over halfway across the truck bed without the need for slinging eliminates any oscillation of the loads and minimises any risk to the operators. We can also offload from one side of the HGV in the warehouse, which makes the procedure much quicker and more economical on space.”

the risk of product damage. Together with a lift height of 9.5m to access the 13 storage levels, maximum use of all available space has been achieved to accommodate the 2,353 picking locations. An in-cab camera monitor ensures a good view of the load when accessing the high top beam, and hydraulic fork positioners allow quick and easy adjustment of the fork width to accord to the varying product sizes. Smaller C2500 ESTs are in operation in over a dozen BSS Industrial branches, and these were designed to meet the requirements for very manoeuvrable machines that can offload from HGVs,

Combilift Ltd – Ireland Fax: +353 47 80501 Email: info@combilift.com Website: www.combilift.com

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M arch 2014