All shades of upgrades

In a Q&A session, Composites in Manufacturing spoke to Premier Autoclaves and Oven Solutions’ group sales manager, Scott Dyson at the recent Advanced Engineering 2017 show about its specialist services to upgrade and overhaul autoclaves for modern manufacturing requirements.

Q: What services and support does Premier Autoclaves provide?

We are the only company to focus on existing autoclaves and associated equipment. This can entail those going into service on an annual or bi-annual basis to ensure that preventative maintenance is undertaken, so that any issues will cost much less - right through to stripping an autoclave right down to its bare bones and making it new again. This could be for a multitude of reasons, depending on customer requirements.

Q: What is the importance of autoclaves in composite part production?

Autoclaves are obviously critical and at the forefront, and this is a big reason why Premier Autoclaves does so well on the support side in particular, but also the upgrades because customers often do not have a spare autoclave just lying about as they represent a considerable investment. If you can optimise the processes that go on within the autoclaves, you can increase traceability and quality and you can improve the supportability of parts so that they are readily available should there be an issue. You can therefore increase its up-time and increase the amount of parts you’re putting through it.

Q: What are the sorts of upgrades your customers need?

More often than not, we’ll first and foremost look at improving controls, because this is where we will get the improved traceability, which could be a requirement to attain Nadcap accreditation for a customer, for example, or other specifications to understand more about what is going on within the autoclave itself. Older autoclaves are often very manual and do not have the same inputs and outputs that a new autoclave system would have. And whilst the autoclave shell itself will go on for years, the controls need to be updated, which is where we come in – to improve those processes and get them up to the standard that they need to be.

Q: This must mean that there are many different requirements for each customer?

Everyone is different – a customer may have requirements that are quite basic, such as an automotive customer just wanting to increase production throughput and as a result needs to increase the size of vacuum zone. However, at the other end of the scale, an aerospace OEM may want to ensure that their flying parts and subsequent traceability is absolutely correct.

Our expertise and focus on autoclave support is something that is fairly unique. It means that when we are required to assist in any breakdown, we have engineers readily available, because this is exactly what we focus on. Furthermore, we also have the expertise on the upgrade side because again, this is what we focus on. With this demand comes our expertise, and in turn we provide a good solution.

Q: What are the benefits of exhibiting at the Advanced Engineering 2017 show?

The Advanced Engineering show is a regular fixture in our diary every year. We get to meet high quality professional people, and although we only have a small presence, we are here to pretty much ‘speed date’ any potential new customers. It’s also a very efficient way of seeing our existing customers: we can find out about current and future trends coming into the marketplace, attend some of the informative open forums taking place on the showfloor and meet some of our friends in the industry. It’s a fantastic show that offers a high quality of visitor and a high throughput of visitor traffic too.

For more information, watch our Composites in Manufacturing website video link: http://bit.ly/2htjHzj

www.premierautoclaves.com