Plymouth based engineering manufacturer Hymec have invested in a swarf briquetting system as part of their sustainability plan.

The company were looking to achieve a number of responsible manufacturing goals - both environmental and budgetary. Primarily these were to:

  • Increase the value of their aluminium swarf
  • Decrease the number of recycler pick ups from their site
  • Reclaim the coolant back into their machines

The iSwarf 440 briquetting machine from Hocker Polytechnik with some bespoke system design elements provided the perfect solution. The nature of the machines means there is flexibility to create something unique to the customer where necessary.

There were significant space restrictions on-site meaning the machine had to fit into quite a small area. Plenty of pre-planning was therefore involved both for the design and application of the machine, as well as a challenging installation process to be managed - it was a tight squeeze but it will be worth it to Hymec for the savings and benefits!

This bespoke system was constructed to also include a larger hopper to enable 2-3 skips of swarf to be fed into the machine. Increasing the capacity of swarf loaded in, reduces the amount of time an operator has to spend at the briquette machine.

Once fed into the hopper, the swarf is conveyed up to a vibrating screen to filter out foreign objects such as parts or billets to protect the machine. From there it's pressed to form the briquettes, with the coolant pressed out from the swarf collected into an IBC for reuse.

The significant reduction in the volume of waste swarf being stored at the manufacturing site has translated into 13 skips coming down to just 1. This has brought down the number of collections made by the recycler as well as the storage implications and skip costs.

If any of these benefits sound like something your company is considering then you can find out more about our swarf briquetting solutions by hitting the link below or get in touch!