Client Stories: Gough Engineering - Steel Transport Pallets

What do you get when you combine powerful CAD software, plasma profile-cut steel plate and a press-brake, with highly skilled welders and fabricators?

Answer: Almost anything you care to imagine! I'm used to working on a scale somewhat smaller and lighter than steel fabrication, so I've got to say I'm mightily impressed with what Gough Engineering can build.

My brief from Project and Quotation Manager, Danny Crawford, at Gough Engineering was to design a series of transport pallets for Stockton coalmine's CAT exchange parts based on some pallets already successfuly in service. These parts included hydraulic cylinders weighing up to 600kg, plus wheel and axle groups weighing in at over a tonne for the largest.

The environment at the mines is pretty tough on equipment, so the pallets were required to improve on the currently used wooden boxes with their relatively short lives. Features were to include bases with oil contamination capture and auxilliary parts storage, ease of loading, retractable safety straps, and safe part retention. I was required to work in with their existing Inventor systems and libraries, which worked well with a little help from draw-2-3D and Cadpro's expertise also.

To make it a little more challenging, I was required to measure up each component to a level suitable for simple modelling. Measuring required working in with various departments of Gough Engineering, so I had to work independantly with the various staff without interfering too much with their work. Pretty soon I became quite efficient at measuring, modelling, designing and producing the manufacturing drawings, overcoming the challenges of measuring heavy equipment in tight spaces.

Being a heavy industrial environment, Quarticom was also required to provide a current Health & Safety policy before I was allowed to work on the site. This was provided in quick order once I was 'inducted' into their system.

I've thoroughly enjoyed this contract, and feel privileged to work with all the staff who have been nothing but helpful all the way. As of September 2013, I'd completed almost 70 customised pallet measure & designs, including some special intricate designs for some of the more unusually shaped equipment.