Capital Equipment News July 2018

ENGINE REBUILDS

remanufacturer is a trusted service provider for several OEMs, including Cummins, MTU, Volvo, Komatsu, Rolls- Royce (gas power generation) and Caterpillar, to mention a few. One of the reasons why these premium OEMs outsource to Metric Automotive Engineering is the level of quality and service the company delivers, as well as the expertise and world-class equipment it has on its floor. “We continuously have to grow our capacity as we try to stay ahead of the demand, workload projections and evolving engine technology,” says Yorke. This has seen the company invest massive capital in recent years, not only in cutting-edge machining equipment, but also in human capital and floor space. Tooling revolution The huge investment in a new crankshaft grinder kicked off Metric Automotive Engineering’s advanced tooling revolution. The custom-built machine is capable of handling 4,75 m of shaft length. “We anticipated that OEMs were going to bring in their 18 and 20 cylinder crankshafts and we needed to put up capacity in place to be able to service these huge engines,” says Yorke. This investment was complemented by a new crankshaft polisher. The custom- engineered machine, which can handle crankshafts with lengths of over 6 m, is said to be the largest of its kind in Africa. Crankshafts have traditionally been ground and then polished on grinding machines, but Yorke reasons that this is not the ideal solution. “Polishing debris contaminates the crank grinding machine and this can lead to accelerated wear on critical areas of the machine,” he says. “Moreover, not all crankshafts need to be both ground and polished; some need only polishing, and doing this on a grinding machine is not the best use of this asset.” The crankshaft polisher is also employed to polish camshafts after re-profiling, or if the journals and lobes only require a polish not a re-profile. Yorke maintains that polishing of these components after grinding is vital, as it removes grinding burrs and ensures that the surface finish is ideally matched to the requirements of the bearing materials they run on. To further improve its capability, Metric Automotive Engineering has also ploughed a sizeable investment in its cylinder block section where it has put up two huge Rottler CNC block machining centres, said to be the only ones of their kind on the continent – there are only

A huge investment in a new crankshaft grinder kicked off Metric Automotive Engineering’s advanced tooling revolution.

mind that these are also expensive items to replace and the current technologies that are currently employed in the country are not able to clean sufficiently. “When doing an engine remanufacture, putting a dirty cooler back on defeats the whole process. The moment oil flows through the cooler, it carries debris and contamination straight back into the engine. Through this cleaning technology, we are able to change all that,” he says. With all the investments in equipment and bigger machines, obviously there has also been a big investment in materials handling equipment to allow for easy moving of the gigantic components around the shop. “We have since spent a lot of money on cranage. Gone are the days when we could move stuff around the shop by hand, the components have just become bigger,” says Yorke. Apart from equipment, Metric Automotive Engineering has also recently doubled its floor space, from 2 000 to 4 700 m². Yorke reasons that the decision was informed by the fact that often there is a long period of time between quoting for the job and getting the go-ahead from the customer to do the work, resulting in many components being stored in the workshop. “Another factor that informed the decision to increase our floor space is that the components that we now work on are a lot larger than they were 20 years ago. We needed to expand our wash bay and cleaning services as well to be able

18 other machines of this nature across the world. Yorke says the two machines represent a significant investment, both financially and strategically – because they have allowed Metric Automotive Engineering to offer any OEM on the continent the same kind of service that they can get anywhere else in Europe or United States. Meanwhile, Yorke tells Capital Equipment News that Metric Automotive Engineering has another three-axis, Rottler F105 block machine on order. “The technology of the three-way axis machines allows us to carry out remanufacturing and repair processes that we were previously not able to do,” says Yorke. “It’s a huge saving for our customers because if we were not able to do some of the salvage repairs during remanufacture, most of the engine blocks would be rendered scrap. The moment the block is rendered scrap, the whole engine rebuild exercise becomes unviable.” More capacity Metric Automotive Engineering has also invested in lots of small equipment that allows the company to carry out some ancillary work it wasn’t able to do before. For example, the company has invested in engine oil and transmission cooler cleaning technology. Often when there is an engine or transmission failure, there is a lot of debris in the oil that gets trapped in the oil or transmission coolers, and cleaning it is quite a mission. Bear in

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