Up, up and away!

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premier1

Premier Autoclaves says it has seen huge business growth in the past year. Composites in Manufacturing looks at reasons for the upsurge in autoclave upgrades in the industry and why this links to the success of the company.

Premier Autoclaves has been helping its composites customers quadruple manufacturing productivity, reduce scrapped parts by tens of thousands of pounds within a matter of months and drastically improve product quality. Key to Premier’s success is that its customers benefit from this without spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on new autoclaves, as an upgrade is substantially less.

Upgrading an autoclave is not a new train of thought, however it’s one that has taken off lately due to significant efficiency improvements, whilst minimising disruption to production. There’s also the fact that the autoclave vessel outlives several of the key components of an autoclave by several years and often decades. As such, if an autoclave has reached ‘end of life’ (barring any major issues) it doesn’t necessarily mean you need to be looking up current scrap rates for steel.

As Premier’s sales manager, Scott Dyson says: “What seems like an ageing, beaten up system can quickly become a future-proofed asset to the business.”

The trend of upgrading is likely to continue due to the ability to convert an autoclave to whatever the level required. Premier caters for all requirements, including: replacing all hardware and software and making the machine ‘as new’; vacuum system upgrade increasing capacity; cooling upgrade increasing speed of throughput; front-end controls upgrade (replacing only controls) to attract new customers with improved traceability and, for example AMS2750E accreditation and a door safety upgrade to ensure it cannot be opened with pressure inside.

The bespoke nature of upgrades means most budgets can be met with a clear return on investment.

Maximising uptime

Away from direct financial benefits, if a machine is to have a full upgrade (hardware and software), turnaround would be circa six weeks with 7-10 day’s downtime rather than a minimum of six month’s lead-time on a new machine plus the disruptive removal and reinstallation. Downtime is even less on smaller upgrades with Premier working around production.

With Premier claiming to be the only company to focus entirely on upgrades and support of existing autoclaves and ovens, it’s been an exciting 12 months of impressive growth. This growth has seen 13 upgrades to its own CureManager control system, an increase in-service contract customers and Premier being rated the ‘best supplier’ by some of the world’s leading manufacturers within the industry.

“As composites manufacturing businesses our customers rely on their production line functioning efficiently with maximised uptime,” states Dyson. “Our focus on their existing equipment has a good number of benefits: reaction time is immediate if there is a problem; we have experience on all brands of autoclaves; our engineers are experts specifically in terms of support and upgrades, the list goes on. I suppose the key is that we don’t try to be everything to everyone and instead operate purely in the support and upgrades field faster, more flexibly and more efficiently than ever before.”

Premier’s reputation as the upgrade specialists seems to have been fortified as it continues to push to transform antiquated, unreliable autoclaves into state-of-the-art equipment.

“Solutions are always bespoke to customer requirements and as you’d expect with a number of them in Formula 1 and OEM aerospace companies’ quality is paramount,” concludes Premier’s managing director, Samuel Clayton. “I am very proud of the team and we’re all very proud of the company’s performance in terms of our progress. Growth is positive, however, the main aim is to maintain focus so that we get more comments like the above.”

www.premierautoclaves.com

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