Clearing the air for tube maker

One of the first departments to be expanded at Iracroft was the brazing department. Kieran Mullen, Iracroft's director of engineering & continuous improvement, says: "The Nederman team project managed the solution with complete transparency and professionalism at every stage. Nederman project engineers reassured us from quote to project completion with their technical expertise and understanding of our needs. They worked closely with our welding and force arc vendors to create fully compliant systems that would also deliver maximum extraction with minimum impact on the operator workspace. Most importantly their professional project management team delivered a complete solution that required very little input and stress on our behalf."

By doubling the size of its brazing department, Iracroft replaced smaller less efficient extraction systems with 14 extraction drops to eight induction heating stations and a number of brazing benches. The 'at-source' extraction systems remove the brazing fumes to a single extraction point outside the building.

For Iracroft, its concern was the generation of acidic flux fumes that could potentially cause a carcinogenic environment for its brazing team. By installing the Nederman Original extraction arms with an air flow rate of 800m3/h, the fumes are now efficiently extracted to a Nederman NCF120/15 fan unit outside the building.

By project managing the entire process, Nederman complemented its flexible, user-friendly extraction arms with a complete ducting system that delivers the brazing fumes to the NCF120/15 fan unit. With a maximum air flow rate of 12,000m3/h and a noise level of 66.4dB, locating the NCF120/15 fan system outside the brazing department has also eliminated the continuous noise the staff may have encountered with an internally sourced system. 

Bespoke solution

The effortless manner in which Nederman delivered a solution for the brazing section at Iracroft resulted in the fume and dust specialist being invited to deliver a new bespoke solution for the welding department that has also expanded. This growth has seen 23 working bays being increased to 31 and creation of a building extension to provide eight new MIG/TIG welding bays for the production of mild steel bracket assemblies.

The preference of staff in this department is for the provision of downdraft benches, which the company already had in place prior to Nederman involvement. Added to this, the existing building had two roof-mounted media filtration systems to extract any airborne particulate not caught at source by the benches.

By doubling the size of the department Iracroft needed to remove the additional airborne particulate to comply with the EH40 regulations. To meet compliance levels prior to expansion, Iracroft's roof-mounted extraction needed to achieve an 'air change per hour' rate of 3; it achieved close to this with existing systems. However, the area of the department was expanded to 210m2 and a Nederman study of the department’s air quality resulted in Iracroft requiring an 'air change rate' of 14 to comply with health & safety regulations. This was comfortably achieved by augmenting the existing extraction with three 2,550m3/h rated Nederman MF 12-15 media filters installed at high level.