Altra Industrial Motion

The grid coupling of a large water pump at Sheffield Forgemasters Engineering was coming to the end of its operational life. To avoid costly re-engineering of the pump S.F.E.L. wanted to commission a bespoke coupling to match the original’s footprint. While most suppliers were unable to produce a coupling to the right size, Altra Industrial Couplings was able to match the design of the original and work in partnership with S.F.E.L. to produce it.

A large steel mill near Budapest, Hungary, was installing a hot strip runout table that would transport extremely hot metal around the plant. Nearly 350 individual couplings were required which would be able to withstand the high temperatures and contaminants that are present in metal working applications.

Altra Industrial Motion, has expanded its sales force with the appointment of two new people at its coupling division. Andrew Bargh and Neil Slater both join the team with a wealth of experience in sales and engineering, ready to represent some of the best known names in the coupling industry including Bibby, Huco, TB Woods and Ameridrives.

When a large underwater sand mine began to reach depths that had previously been inaccessible to pump dredging, the mine’s operators thought that they would have to commission a clamshell-style dredge to keep the mine operational. However Dredging Supply Co., the industry leaders in dredging technology, believed that it could build the world’s longest suction pump dredge using couplings from TB Wood’s of the Altra Couplings group to form the drive shaft.

Waste water facilities face many tough operating conditions every day. Easily processing many hundreds of millions of gallons each day, they operate on a continuous cycle whilst being exposed to water, chemicals, high shock loads and extreme temperatures. Couplings play an important role in wastewater processing by controlling vibration, minimizing misalignment and reducing maintenance costs. While they should operate maintenance free for many years, poorly specified couplings can fail which leads to lengthy downtime.

Altra Industrial Motion has added to its impressive collection of industry leading brands with the acquisition of Lamiflex. The South American based company specialises in the manufacture of high speed couplings. Its acquisition will strengthen Altra’s industrial couplings division and support the group’s plans to offer further variation of products to its customers all over the world.

David Lockett has been appointed as the new MD of Bibby Turboflex and Huco, two of the global power transmission brands in the Altra Industrial Motion portfolio, both with manufacturing sites in the UK. His responsibility will stretch to overseeing the growth of Altra’s industrial coupling activity in Europe which includes the TB Woods and Ameridrives brands. Through the promotion of each of the brands’ distinct capabilities, David hopes to increase commercial awareness of Altra’s uniquely broad range of products.

Following the company’s integration as a new and strategic part of the worldwide Altra Group of companies Bauer is going for global growth with its market- leading range of highly efficient geared motors. Supported by leading edge manufacturing facilities, in Germany and Slovakia, Bauer is set to leverage the synergies of existing Altra brands in the international power transmission market, and the facilities of Altra’s vast worldwide engineering support and distribution network in over 70 countries globally.

Protecting machinery and systems against expensive failures and costly downtime is critical in today’s competitive market. Neil English of Altra Industrial Motion looks at the technologies available to protect machinery against overloads and to provide safe stopping and holding.

Companies that upgrade their pumping systems, or install new systems, both with the objective of improving efficiency, commit themselves to substantial investment, not only in terms of the pumps themselves, but also with new energy efficient motors to drive them. However, these investments can easily be wasted if the pump/motor combination is not integrated in a way that not only maximises the respective pump and motor efficiencies, but also protects the combined equipment from normal wear and tear.

With requirements for clean energy placing the focus ever more strongly on wind turbines, getting the greatest possible output from a given installation is becoming more and more important. The amount of useful energy that a turbine can extract from the wind is proportional to the total area which the blades of the turbine will sweep. It is no surprise, then, to see that wind turbine structures are growing steadily bigger. But this places ever greater loads and stresses on the associated mechanical power transmission components in general, and on the brakes in particular.

Altra Industrial Motion has launched a new website: www.AltraFoodAndBeverage.com, which provides engineers and professionals in the global food and beverage industry with a comprehensive resource for application-specific power transmission and motion control products and solutions.

Compact oil immersed hydraulic brake units from Wichita are enabling renewable energy turbines to make the most of energy production from sub sea tidal flows. The Rotech Tidal Turbine is a unique solution to the problem of providing renewable energy, one that is predictable, economical and has a minimal visual impact on the environment.

Twiflex modular brakes are providing up to 35 MNm of total braking torque on two 8-metre ball mills, which are part of South Africa's - and probably the world's - biggest platinum concentrator, at Anglo Platinum's Mogalakwena (previously PPRust) mine near Mokopane. The new concentrator ex­pands milling capacity by 600,000 tons per month, producing an additional 230,000 ounces of platinum per annum and bringing total platinum production at the mine to 430, 000 ounces per year.