Investing for the future – New Equipment at Yorkshire Laser

Yorkshire Laser has recently been spending some money; now I know what you’re thinking, this goes against everything that a Yorkshireman stands for.  You’re right BUT as a company we have a policy of continually:

• Upgrading
• Improving
• investing in our equipment.

We  work to a fairly straight forward plan;  that with the best equipment and the best staff we can expect the best results.

So with this in mind we have recently invested the best part of £15,000 in some new welding plant and a second grinding extraction bench.   For the last 25 years we have relied on Danish company Migatronic’s  welding plant.  Like us their  equipment is hard wearing and will stand up to the rigours of an industrial environment such as an engineering workshop. Even more important perhaps than the hard wearing nature of the Migatronic plant is the welding characteristics of the equipment which are excellent, producing smooth and easily controllable arcs for MIG, TIG and even MMA welding, with excellent wire feed units on the MIG plant and brilliant progressive controls for the TIG plant, the Migatronic equipment gives our welders all they need to be able to lay down effective and aesthetically pleasing weld beads again and again in a variety of materials and positions. Workshop Foreman Scott Johns said: “The Migatronic plant is very good and all of our welders swear by it, we very rarely have any kind of breakdowns and the controllability of the arc on the TIG plant is the best I have seen in over 25 years of welding experience.”

We didn’t stop spending there – next on our shopping list was a third extraction bench.  YLF already operates  with two down draught air benches; one is used to extract mild steel and stainless grinding dust and a second is for extraction of aluminium grinding dust and also glue fumes.  Having to use more than one bench for the linishing of Aluminium, Steel and Stainless steel is a bit of a pain to be honest, we are constantly wheeling the Aluminium extraction bench in and out of the linishing shop, so with this in mind the decision was made to buy an extraction bench that could handle all three materials.
Why can’t we just collect steel, stainless steel and aluminium dust all in the same extraction bench I here you ask? Good question, – to avoid an explosive situation.  Mixing of aluminium dust with steel or stainless dust causes the potential for an explosion, something that we are obviously keen to avoid if at all possible!  Our solution is to employ a wet filter.  This type of system extracts the dust and fumes down into the bench and then sends them through what is basically a wall of water, once the aluminium dust has been soaked it loses its explosive nature rendering it simply harmless grinding debris.

We needed a tough bench for a tough job so chose the down draught bench from Climavent Systems Ltd.  Climavent’s  UB1809 Universal Bench was felt to be the best option, the equipment itself is sturdily made and proven in the field whilst Climavent have a wealth of knowledge and experience in the extraction field and were felt to be capable of offering the support that YLF need from this type of specialist company.