Shotton Paper company is part of the UPM group. UPM is one of the world’s leading forest products companies. The company’s businesses focus on magazine papers, newsprint, fine and speciality papers, converting materials and wood products. The company has production in 15 countries and an extensive sales network comprising over 170 sales and distribution companies.

Shotton Paper is sited on a multi acre site in Flintshire and produces over 500,000 Tonnes of quality paper per year. The site employs nearly 500 people. Some years ago David Ditchfield, Automation Development engineer, purchased an Ultraprobe 2000 primarily to detect air leaks and help reduce energy consumption. Many leaks in the compressed air system have been found and corrected over the years.

"The device has also been useful in other areas of maintenance. We have many hundreds of instrument loops using compressed air to control valves and actuators etc, and if the performance is not as expected it is so easy with the Ultraprobe to scan around the valve/actuator etc to see if there are air leaks. We then follow the air line back to the local instrument junction box again checking for leaks. Easy without an Ultraprobe you might say, but we are working in a very noisy area where ear defenders are mandatory, but the Ultraprobe picks out even minute leaks that can be affecting the performance of the control loop."

"Another application where the Ultraprobe is routinely used is to "sound out" fan bearings, which cannot be accessed in any other way. We have a large number of ac and dc variable speed drives all of, which have fans for cooling purposes. Most of these fans are inaccessible for normal condition monitoring, both from an electrical safety point of view, but also their construction is such that you cannot get to the bearings with "contact" vibration monitoring equipment. So what we do, well we just scan with the Ultraprobe and listen. We have no "quantitative" value where we know they are going to fail, just experience tells us that it’s time to change them. Our downtime due to fan failures has dropped dramatically since we started using the Ultraprobe. OK we may have changed some prematurely, but the loss of just one small fan can result in a significant loss of production, and potentially late deliveries to the customer."

For many years motor testing has been the "Cinderella" of condition monitoring. Things however are beginning to change with the realisation that 47% of motor faults are related to electrical faults (rotor and stator failures). These faults cannot generally be detected using ultrasound, vibration or infrared however motor circuit analysis (MCA) allows an inspector to identify turn, coil and cable faults, phase and ground faults, rotor ecentricity, broken rotor bars and casting voids.

E-mail or call 01424 437000 for a complimentary CD.

Ultratrend DMS 2.01

If you still haven't upgraded from Ultratrend 1.31, then perhaps now is the time. Some of the new features include:

• Color Coded Alarm Bars Indicate Low or High Alarm levels in the Data Tree
• New Microsoft Access platform - Allows you to save data bases on your network
• Add images to your reports: include photos, infrared images, charts, graphs, etc

ThermaCAM QuickView 1.3

If you're using an older version of QuickView, why not upgrade? This new update fixes a few bugs, improves the software, and even adds new features such as image zoom!

EMCAT 2005 & TREND 2005

Already we can offer new versions of EMCAT and TREND 2005 - trending and analysis packages for our All Test Pro line of motor testing equipment. The software has been redesigned to be more user friendly, while great effort has been made to ensure your results are accurate and the programme is both stable and bug-free. If you would like to learn more about EMCAT or TREND, please do get in touch.

Ultrasound Level 1 Course - 14th to 18th November 2005, National Fluid Power Centre, Worksop

We have been thrilled with the response for this course. To date 25 students have booked to come and we cannot now take any further bookings.

http://www.alpine-components.co.uk/training/ultrasound/level-one/

Hazard Ex Conferences

We are planning to have table top equipment displays at the following Hazard-Ex conferences:

• Dartford: 9th November
• Aberdeen: 22nd November
• Cardiff: 1st December

If you are interested in attending any of these events to learn more about the ATEX directive, please call.

Value Driven Maintenance: Birmingham 1st December 2005

Many companies in the Benelux countries have now adopted the VDM concept, with very impressive results, and a number of UK organisations are now running pilot studies. At our conference, DSM (Worldwide), Kappa Triton (Netherlands), GlaxoSmithKline (UK), Akzo Nobel (UK) and Volker Stevin Rail & Traffic Services (Netherlands) will describe how their maintenance organisations have been structured to create maximum added value. Alpine will have a table top display at this event, for more info please call us.

Motor Diagnostics Workshop Level 1 -Las Vegas 12-14th December 2005

For those of us who cannot stand the pace in Worksop, why not learn about Motor testing during the day and fritter away some hard earned cash in the evening!

We are planning to hold a similar course in the UK next year...please register your interest by e mail.

More Recruitment at Alpine Components

We are very pleased to welcome Maurice Camp to Alpine. Based in the north east, Maurice will give local sales and training support to our customers in his area. With his background in IT and training I am sure he will prove to be a great asset to the company.

Irish Valve Technologies

IVT will be helping to promote the Ultraprobe range in Southern Ireland. Connel McGuire, the company's founder, is qualified to Level 1 ultrasound and will be able to advise on the many applications for the Ultraprobe range.

It is always good to receive your feedback on any product we have sold or rented. If you have a success story that you would like to share with others in a future newsletter, then please do get in touch.

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Contact Us - Jeremy Lineham, Mike Trim, Toni Simmonds, Jon Hill