Fasteners increase crop spraying rates
An
Alcoa Fastening Systems product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team
Nov 10, 2004
A request from French farmers to increasing the speed of their crop spraying vehicles has led to a decade of successful business between two manufacturing companies in the UK and France.
A request from French farmers to increasing the speed of their crop spraying vehicles has led to a decade of successful business between two manufacturing companies in the UK and France.
Hardi Evrard, part of the Hardi International group of companies, based in Savigny-Le-Temple 40 kilometres south of Paris, manufacture crop sprayers and accessories.
Alcoa Fastening Systems (AFS) with Huck fasteners as its primary brand engineer high quality, high-performance fastening systems serving a variety of applications predominantly in the truck, trailer, commercial vehicle body builder, auto and railcar markets.
In 1995, Hardi realised that reducing vehicle weight with the aim of increasing speed and performance on its Alpha range of sprayers, required a change in the production operation.
Originally the 12mm steel chassis construction was welded together.
However, although a 5mm turbo mechanical steel had been sourced as part of the solution, it still created problems.
Hubert Beauquesne, factory manager at Hardi Evrard explained: "Farmers were requesting lighter, suspended, quicker and more manoeuvrable vehicles.
The elasticity of the thinner steel was compromised in the welding process so after some research the Huck-Fit Lockbolt was devised.
Using Huck-Fit not only ensured a strong clamp force but helped to reduce the sprayer's weight from 6.7 tonnes to 5.3 tonnes.
In addition, the vehicle's balance and stability improved through even weight distribution between front and rear - with full or empty spray tank, open or closed spray boom - a feature particularly useful in adverse weather conditions." He continued: "The effective weight distribution has allowed us to extend the spray boom using lighter aluminium to a width of 40m on the Alpha 3400 and 3500 models.
Production time has also been dramatically reduced.
Chassis assembly time went down from fifty hours of jig welding to three hours of riveting per vehicle.
Riveting is also safer than welding which has pleased our health and safety inspectors".
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