Due to the Covid pandemic and the inability of customers to travel, the industrial finishing equipment manufacturer Guyson International has had to remotely pass off a number of machines destined for export markets.

With the cooperation of its customers and use of the latest video conferencing software and hardware, the pass-off trials were successfully completed on time.

Via a combination of Microsoft Teams running on laptop computers, fixed cameras in the factory build area (to show the overall machine build), and the use of hand-held mobile phones that relayed detailed video footage of machines working, Guyson and its European customers were able to go through the rigorous Factory Acceptance Trial checklists and pass off the machines.

Guyson says the fact that these ‘virtual machine pass offs’ have all gone very smoothly, and with overseas travel restrictions foreseen for a good while yet, this use of modern technology will no doubt become the ‘new normal’ for manufacturers — such as itself — that generates much of its business through export sales.

In the first half of August alone, Guyson exported over £1 million of equipment. This included two large rotary indexing turntable blast machines for a Scandinavian automotive company, plus a Guyson Multiblast TR — a through-belt conveyorised blast machine fitted with eight blast guns that will be used for blast cleaning thread-rolling dies.

This particular Multiblast TR machine was up against an especially tight delivery schedule, as it was replacing an existing machine that had to run in a production until its replacement arrived.

The new machine was passed off — via video link technology — at Guyson’s Skipton factory on a Wednesday, stripped down on Thursday and Friday morning, then dispatched, via lorry, late Friday.

It arrived the following Tuesday morning at the customer’s site, where a Guyson engineer was ready to install and begin commissioning the machine.