African Fusion November 2018

New UNIarc welding equipment

Digital welding technology at affordable prices

Following the launch by Renttech SA of its new UNIarc range of welding equipment at Electra Mining Africa (EMA) in September, African Fusion talks to the company’s MD, Duncan Whitehead, and national salesmanager, Eduan Naude, about the associated technical and cost advantages.

“ W e made a decision to use EMA 2018 as the launch platform for our new range of UNIarc welding equipment. For the past three years, we have been engaging with some of the best welding machine manufacturers from all over the world to improve and complete our range to suit the demands of our rental and sales markets,” begins Whitehead. “UNIarc is a brand that’s earned itself a reputation for reliability and performance in some of the harshest South African conditions over the last 20 years, in all sectors of the industrial market. With the rapid advancement of software technologies available today, we embarked on improving our existing offering to realise the benefits of these technologies for our customers, thereby further enabling them to drive welding and fabrication efficiencies. “The challengewas to ensure that we make it easy and intuitive for the user, whilst unlocking the benefits for the business owner: reduced fettling costs,

Naude continues: “The other im- portant consideration was to ensure that advanced processes were made affordable to themajority of themarket. The harsh reality is that South African fabricators are now competing for local projects with international firms that employ the latest technology to reduce their fabrication cost. We wanted to help South African industry to become more competitive, by harnessing the latest technologies for everyone, from a one-man business to a multinational construction company. We believe we have achieved this without compromis- ingquality. In fact,most of our units offer more features than those of our interna- tional competitors at a very favourable prices,” he says. “Additionally, we also improved our processes to incorporate international testing standards for the validation of welding equipment as required by com- panies accredited to ISO 3834, which is nowa requirement ofmost big construc- tion contracts. “With respect towelding equipment, ISO 3834 requires that all welding ma- chines usedmust be validated to ensure that the actual welding current and/or voltage output delivered duringwelding accurately matches the parameter set- tings. An external authorised inspection authority (AIA) certified our process for the delivery of performance certificates according to ISO 17662, the equipment calibration, verification and validation standard. “This is also now incorporated into our ISO 9001 quality management systems via a formal scope change. All newequipment sold and our rental fleet machines are now validated according to this standardbefore reaching the cus- tomer. This is an additional service we offer clients for their existing equipment

reduced distortion, reduced material handling costs, more effective use of labour, and increased deposition rates in the various welding positions,” says Whitehead Another critical consideration was to further improve reliability and to reduce costs of ownership. Various tech- nologies have been added toprotect the equipment from unstable input power; voltage drops associated with fixed line input power; aswell asmobile generator power. “Long extension leads as well as improperly sized extensions were also factors we had to cater for; a reality in the construction and fabrication indus- try. On the back of these improvements, we have been able to increase our stan- dardparts and labourwarranty fromone year to three years on our three-phase machines and to 18 months on our single phase units,” he adds. This is all backed up with parts avail- ability and qualified service technicians in South Africa to ensure downtime is minimal.

Renttech used EMA 2018 as the launch platform for its new range of UNIarc welding equipment.

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November 2018

AFRICAN FUSION