Moyle Engineering - Production of large-scale concrete products for agriculture in Hungary
The family-run enterprise Göbesz Kft is headquartered in Gödöllö, Hungary, location of the summer palace of the famous Empress Sissi which once again became a magnet for visitors after an extensive restoration. Göbesz Kft provides ready-mix concrete and steel reinforcement to construction sites and has become established in the market as a manufacturer of concrete products. Once the management had seen the potential in also entering the agricultural concrete products market, they decided to indeed take this step and in 2011 built a small production facility. Their partner for this endeavour was Bouter Betonexport e.K. which acted in an advisory capacity to Göbesz Kft, created an investment concept, and brokered the acquisition of the equipment.
Managing director of Bouter Betonexport e.K., Mr. A. Th. Bouter, has already been involved for several decades in the area of tilt mould machinery for direct demoulding. Today, he focuses on consulting and on the sale of such systems, for which he draws on solutions from different manufacturers. Using components from different equipment sources, Mr. Bouter can piece together a complete system which is tailored to the needs of the customer.
The compact system delivered in 2011 consisted of a Lammers Type L-3 machine, with which the company entered into production of slatted floors for pig farming (see CPI 6/2012). After Göbesz Kft had successfully initiated this production and the quality of the concrete slatted floors met all of the relevant EU requirements, the company received the CE mark for these products.
Then, when good sales figures demanded an increase in production and Göbesz also wanted to produce larger slatted floors for agriculture, the question of a larger system arose. What was desired was a new system with a larger table surface area and higher capacity. In addition, the system should also have the option of being used for wetcast products.
Based on these specifications, Mr. Bouter put together a system with components from the Northern Irish company Moyle Engineering Ltd. and the three German suppliers Knauer Engineering GmbH, Lammers Formen und Maschinenbau GmbH and Probst Greiftechnik-Verlegesysteme GmbH.
For the commissioning and other services, Atillas Bt was found to be a suitable partner. Atillas is an internationally established company whose main activities are the sale and commissioning of equipment for the concrete industry and their maintenance. The basic machine is the MH-5000 tilt mould machine (with a lifting force of 6 tonnes) for handling moulds and pallets. With this system, a semi-dry mixture can be used and demoulded directly after the mould is filled with concrete and vibrated and the concrete surface smoothed. This system can also be used to manufacture wet-cast products, which then harden in the mould.
In the tilt mould machine’s wet-cast process, moulds are transported from the mould storage area to the vibrating station. The procedure for demoulding the product is similar to that used in direct demoulding. The machine places a pallet on top of the (open) mould with fresh product, rotates both through 180° and sets down the pallet together with the mould. After curing, the product is then demoulded. The order of transport movements can be freely determined by the operator, who controls the machine via a remote control.
In the normal demoulding process, the mould with the pallet on top of it is raised by the machine and transported to the demoulding table and rotated by 180°. Subsequently, the product can be demould ed. The mould is then available again for the next production cycle and, after being rotated back 180°, is once more positioned on the vibrating station. The cured product is then conveyed to the end of the produc-tion line.
A number of steel pallets for a day's production are located in the facility. The useful length for this type of pallet is 5,000 mm, and the product width is generally 1,200 mm.
Knauer vibration station
This Knauer vibration station consists of three vibrating stands, each with two motors. The centrifugal force for each vibrat ing stand is 80 kN. The total weight of the mould with product may be up to 5,500 kg. With three vibrating stands, the complete vibration system has a centrifugal force of 24 tonnes.
This way, an average acceleration of 4 - 5 g can be achieved. However, as the mould carrier with moulds is not fixed, but is rather set in motion directly by a kind of shock vibration, much higher peak accelerations of up to 20 g can be achieved. Since the mould bracket rests on rigid polyurethane plates, noise emission is kept in check and vibration is forwarded well.
Filling machine with metering box and smoothing plate, with both longitudinal and transverse movement
The chassis runs on the same rails as the production machine. The filling unit itself runs on rails on the chassis. Thus, the filling machine has both longitudinal and transverse movement in two directions. A conveyor belt introduces the concrete mix into the concrete batching machine.
The mix is kept loose by means of two agitators. The concrete batching machine can be moved up and down, in each case to the correct height for batching. Consequent ly, the concrete can be introduced uniformly into the mould. The machine features a smoothing plate in order to smooth the surface of the concrete. The system operator has a good overview of the mould and controls the machine by means of a simple remote control, making the machine very flexible. Because of lower wage levels in Hungary, automation of the manipulator and the filling machine was considered neither necessary nor meaningful.
The manipulator (also referred to as handler) is used not only for the production and storage of the pallets, but also to collect the cured products from the pallet. For this purpose, the machine places a rotating frame onto a pallet with product. Then the manipulator lifts up the pallet with product and rotating frame, rotates both, and sets down the rotated product. The product is then transported using a slab laying grab made by Probst. The versatile MH tilt mould machines can be used in systems for immediate or later demoulding. In order to increase production, a second manipulator can be used.
The system was commissioned in September 2013 once Göbesz Kft was fully satisfied. It is not only in the agricultural sector, but also for many other concrete products that this Bouter-Moyle system is used. With this business idea, a selection is made of components tailored to the customer’s needs and assembled into a well-functioning unit in a single system.