Fleet-based
Wanner International and
Pumps and Equipment (Warwick) Ltd (P&E) last month celebrated the 30th anniversary of their partnership in bringing pumping systems to the manufacturing industry. The two companies began working together in the early 1990s to provide high-pressure coolant systems in a range of industrial sectors, including automotive, aerospace, defence, pharmaceuticals, and medical technology.
P&E is currently servicing over 100 Wanner Hydra-Cell pumps each year, some of which were installed over 20 years ago and are still running efficiently. These cover a range of machine tool applications from milling and drilling through to grinding.
With no dynamic seals, the pumps require little maintenance, reliably handling corrosive, abrasive and non-lubricating liquids and fine solids up to 500µm and deliver up to 90% energy efficiency with oil and water-based coolants. They can also run dry indefinitely and have much lower total life cycle costs compared to other solutions — a typical screw pump is 25% more expensive over five years.
Moreover, it is the reliability and ease of servicing of Wanner’s Hydra-Cell range that encourages P&E to use the pumps in a variety of applications. — they are used in a range of machine tool operations, largely due to their energy efficiency, reliability and long service life.
Hydra-Cell’s seal-less design allows the pump to handle liquids with suspended solids from 0.1µm up to 500µm, reliably and consistently over many years. It is precisely the fine sub-10µm particles that get past filtration that causes huge maintenance problems for screw, gear and plunger pumps, and can cause a breakdown — the Hydra-Cell can handle these reliably, time after time.
The pump also has a wide choice of valve materials, such as ceramic and tungsten carbide, enabling the processing of materials ranked 10 on the Mohs hardness scale.
Paul Davis, Wanner International managing director, said: “When we first worked with P&E, we put our heads together and developed ‘state of the art’ solutions for efficient and reliable high-pressure coolant systems. It has been a pleasure over the past three decades to see the P&E team of engineers stretch our Hydra-Cells into ever more challenging environments and applications.“
Dave Alexander, P&E’s technical director who joined the company shortly after it began working with Wanner, said: “There is only one word to describe the Hydra-Cell — phenomenal. It is truly a fantastic pump that can handle anything you throw at it.
“When you combine that with our expertise in providing turnkey solutions, especially in high-pressure coolants, our team of experienced electrical, mechanical and pump engineers are providing ideal solutions across the pumping spectrum, whether that is any machine retrofits or large design, build, and installation projects.
“Hydra-Cell’s reliability is spectacular – we still only need to provide minimal servicing to some of the pumps that I myself installed when I joined the company in 1995.”