The Treloar team has been hard at work this week finalising construction and preparing Visy’s custom floating suction for delivery. The process thus far has been relatively smooth, despite the team’s problem solving skills being called into action to successfully address some challenges.
We mentioned in our last post that the solution we had designed incorporated a stainless steel construction in order to withstand the corrosive and flammable nature of the chemicals in use. Upon testing of the device, it was noted that there was a potential risk of distortion. The team put their heads together and came up with a plan to mitigate the chance of distortion. In the end, the simple solution was to upgrade the primary arm construction to a heavier wall, which minimised the distortion caused by the asymmetric heat load.
Something many businesses are facing in these COVID-times is the challenge of product supply and shipping lead times, and in the case of this project, Treloar was not immune to this challenge. The short radius elbows that we included in the design have a thin wall section that is somewhat of a rare commodity at the best of times, so it was particularly difficult to source at the moment. Our team is extremely resourceful however and were able to source the products in Western Australia and made the smart decision to express ship, but they went missing along the way - so again we had to change tack and modify the design slightly to use heavier wall.
Having overcome the challenges in this phase of the construction, we have made some excellent progress. Our local Hunter Valley suppliers were amazing as always and went the extra mile to ensure we received all the laser cut parts and pipe fittings despite a very short lead time. The project is now in the final weld stage and on track for assembly and final testing. The public holiday on Monday last week also added a bit more pressure, but we are lucky to have a dedicated team who are ready for weekend work if required.
Stay tuned next week for an update on the completion of the construction in readiness for delivery and installation.