Aquasub engineering add a SATURN HD Wheel and improve productivity by more than 50%

Published

The AQUA GROUP, comprising of Aquasub Engineering and Aquapump industries, is based in the textile city of Coimbatore. In 2012 they added a SATURN HD wheel to their shot blasting equipment which increased productivity by more than 50% and wear part life by approx. 1.5 times.

Company Profile

As a leading manufacturer with over 50 years of experience in the pump industry, the firm has a widely distributed network of 1000 exclusive dealers and 18 branches across the country. They offer a wide range of product applications such as agriculture, domestic and industrial water supply, drainage and pressure boosting in high-rise buildings.

With eight manufacturing units to produce more than 1600 pump sets per day, the Aqua Group has a huge infrastructure including two automated foundries for ferrous and non- ferrous castings, an electrical lamination (stamping) unit, a fabricated stainless steel pump manufacturing facility with over 150 CNC machines and testing facilities.

DISA and Wheelabrator have a good working relationship with Aquasub having worked with them for a number of years by providing the following equipment:

  • 2 DISA high pressure moulding lines (DISA Flex 70 and ARPA 450)
  • TM 190-75 and TM 240-90 mixers
  • 3 VP shot blast machines
  • BB170 barrel type shot blast machines

挑战，解决方案和结果

Aquasub equipment was fitted with SRD 380 wheels from the old BMD range.

They gave an average wear part life of 400 blast hours (including blades, control cage, impeller and side liners), casting cleaning capacity was approx. 500 T/M and vast service and maintenance support was needed.

After discussing the problems and the potential benefits of a wheel upgrade, Aquasub decided to trial a SATURN HD wheel upgrade to one of the shot blast machines, replacing two SRD 380 wheels.

Benefits of the SATURN HD wheel Upgrade at Aquasub:

  • Increase in productivity by more than 50%
  • Higher wear part life by approx. 1.5 times
  • Better machine uptime
  • Reduced maintenance
  • Machine reliability
  • Minimum downtime

Mr. N. Purushottama, General Manager, Foundry Division Aquasub Engineering comments: "We implemented an equipment modernisation programme (EMP) on our VP-14 machine with SATURN HD wheels after seeing the wheels at IFEX 2011 at Chandigarh.

Our shot blast machines were running on SRD wheels, giving a casting cleaning capacity of 500 T/M with an average wear part life of 400 blast hours."

Mr. N. Purushottama concludes: "The overall capacity has now increased to 750 T/M and the average wear part life has also increased significantly to 750 blast hours. This result helped us in reducing maintenance and service costs and we will soon be implementing EMP on our other existing shot blast machines.”