New Screed Hopper

Last Friday I went to visit Total Concrete's new Stetter batching plant to get some shots of their new screed hopper. Rather than a long description of it, here's a short video showing what it does...

The Big Beast - S 65 SXF

The biggest boom pump in Europe has arrived in the UK...

Unveiling the new Schwing S 65 SXF!

The first of these incredible machines has become the property of London Concrete Pumping. It's first job was on the new Wembley Park development and I was fortunate enough to be offered a chance to visit the site and take some pictures from a cage suspended from a crane. As you can see they came out rather well!

The best ones were taken with my 10mm wide angle lens which allowed me to get a good portion of Wembley Stadium in the background too (which does give a good comparison of size)!

With a vertical reach of just under 65 metres you can see this beast of a machine easily reaches to pour the slab at the back of the 11th floor. It shouldn't have too much trouble with 12 or 13 either.

This is only the seventh S 65 SXF so far produced in the world and is the actual machine featured being built in the promotional video below.



And one more picture...

Building A Batching Plant

Earlier in the year we sold our first Stetter Batching Plant in the UK to Total Concrete in Woking. To help document the occasion we set up a time-lapse camera on site for three months. What was interesting to see so clearly was the main visible work of erecting the plant itself only took a week. Much more time was spend before hand on preparation and ground work, and then afterwards on connecting, testing etc.

The plant produced it's first commercial batch in May and is continuing to function well (as you'd expect), and the guys at Total are really happy with the quality and service provided by Schwing Stetter UK. Everyone happy!

A Day in the Life (of an S20)

A few months back I was invited by James Harding at Hardcrete to take some video footage of a day's pour in Chorleywood. They had recently bought a new Schwing S20 mobile pump and were happy to allow me to film for the day while they poured the 150 cubic metre concrete foundation for a new home.


We particularly wanted to show the main feature of the new S20 in that it could set up without extending outriggers beyond the edge of the vehicle itself, demonstrating that the machine could set up in very tight locations - a good thing for working in cities and towns in particular.

While I was there everyone working on the project was happy to say how pleased they were with the new Schwing machine - which is always great to hear.

We even set up a time-lapse camera and got the drone out for a bit of aerial footage! Several weeks later I had managed to edit it down to under 7 minutes. The result is above...

Reptor Video

It seems, looking at the viewing statistic that you blog readers rather like the videos I put up from time to time and also stuff to do with the new S 38 SX 'Reptor' mobile pump.

Well then as a special Schwing Stetter May bonus - here for your viewing pleasure is a combination of both!


This short video showing the new mobile pump at work was sent to me this afternoon by our good colleagues in Germany and as soon as I saw it I thought I need this to be public so our customers and friends can see this amazing new machine at work.

Enjoy!

An Interesting Puzzle

As regular readers will know, a part of my job (a part I particularly enjoy) is to visit clients on site and get photos of their Schwing pumps and other Schwing Stetter equipment in action. The photos normally end up on our office walls in one form or another and on our website. I'm not a trained photographer but I'd like to think I have a reasonable eye and occasionally an image comes out particularly well.

One such image turned up after I spent some time with a camera up at the Merseylink Gateway bridge project where Reillys had three Schwing pumps working at the same time. We were so pleased with this image that we turned it into a puzzle - just for something a bit different and interesting. (It also features this month in the Schwing Stetter calendar!)

Last weekend I decided it was time to have a go at doing the puzzle. So on Saturday afternoon I cleared the dinning room table and emptied the pieces out onto it. For some extra interest, I rigged up my camera above the table to take a shot every thirty seconds to create a time-lapse video of the puzzle being done.


The 1000-piece puzzle came together over the course of the weekend with help from the whole family.

Sadly the camera did move a bit during the project - it was held to the room light fitting with cello-tape (this was a spur of the moment idea - not a major production!) so whilst I've tried to compensate in 'post production', there is a bit of movement and at times the corners are cut off. However if you can get past that, and like puzzles (and time lapse photography), and possibly concrete pumps, you might enjoy this little video...  (It's 1 minute, 21 seconds long - in case that matters to you...)

Promotional Film

Over at our German HQ, our opposite numbers have put together a rather good promotional video which they have playing in their reception area. They have been kind enough to forward me the file for this - so here it is for your viewing pleasure...

Animated Ability

The people at our Head Office in Germany have been busy of late. Alwyne, one of our very good sales chaps came back from Bauma with a memory stick for me with some really good animations which the Germans had put together. They show the new S 38 SX 'Reptor' boom opening and reaching into some really tight spots.

One of this blogs most popular posts has been the one showing the S 36 S reaching into the workshop space. These animations show how the new Reptor (as in Reptile - Snake like flexibility...) can reach into a difficult space in a similar manner, and also shows it opening up under a restricted height (7.4 metres since you ask).

I have put them both on a new web page on out website. You can also see them below...

All Lined Up

A long-standing client of ours, Easymix Concrete recently decided to all get up very early one Sunday morning and get some promotional shots of their fleet including Volumetric Truck Mixers and Concrete Pumps. They also made a short video of the exercise (above) which really looks rather good. It turns out that their marketing guy, Ben, also has a background in video production.

It was a big event for the company. They gathered all of their vehicles very early on the Sunday morning and drove across their hometown of Croydon. The whole company came out in force to show off the growth of the business over the last 10 years, and friends and family joined them in the yard for lunch afterwards.

As Ben told me, as well as general promotion, the reason for this was that seeing as their fleet has grown in size so much, they were curious to see how it would look altogether on the road. What is particularly heart warming is that every concrete pump in the fleet is a Schwing. For the record that's four Truck Mounted Static Pumps and one S20 Mobile. Here they are on the right (taking pride of place...)

It's great to see our customers doing well and reaching such important milestones.

Why Pump Concrete?

The continuing refurbishment of the offices continues to yield items of interest. A few months ago we filled up a bunch of boxes with 'inessential general office stuff' (for want of a better phrase) and packed them away in storage. We recently brought them back and had a bit of a sort through, unearthing a not insubstantial collection of corporate videos.

Not wanting to lose these historical, if not interesting corporate records, we thought we'd transfer them to DVD.

The first of these, which can be seen above, is 'Why Pump Concrete', a 1990s 10 minute justification of using concrete pumps for building projects. All the concepts still apply today, but what is interesting is that the advantages of pumping concrete needed to be pointed out, indicating they were not so self evident back then as they would seem today.

The collection of videos contains a fairly wide scope of material including some interesting short documentaries about tunnel building, assembling a Stetter Compact Batching Plant, a 'catwalk' parade of Schwing Pumps in front of a cheering crowd and how to service a flat gate valve, right through to one which started with a promising soundtrack but soon became a not-so-riveting 15 minutes showing a chap shotcreting a wall.

Most if not all of these will make their way onto our dedicated YouTube channel so feel free to subscribe if all of this sends you into shivers of anticipation...

The promised Utiform video is still in post production (these things do take a short while) but should be ready in the not too distant future. (Keep watching this space...)

Crossrail Video

Back in October last year I was invited to go and visit one of the Crossrail sites where a Schwing pump was being used by Kelly Formwork to pour the concrete 'base' slab inside the rail tunnels. While there I took the opportunity to shoot some video of what was going on. I went back again last week to get some final shots and a couple of extra interviews. Here is the finished edited result...



On the day I was there Kelly Formwork used our SP3500 to pump concrete through over 1.3km of horizontal pipeline, finishing the pour in one of the tunnels and setting a new UK record for concrete distance pumping in the process.

Everyone involved was very pleased with the equipment and service Schwing Stetter had provided - and were happy to say so. It's always good to get positive feedback like this.

It was also really great to have a chance to experience the Crossrail project for myself, walk through some tunnels including under the Thames and see the tunnel development process.

Open To Ideas

A few mornings ago, Rob our chief welding engineer asked me to get some video of something he had just finished customising.

A client had asked if we could adjust a truck mixer so the drum flap could open all the way up so the mixture could be properly inspected. The answer was of course 'yes' - we are an engineering company after all. So here we have the hydraulic fully opening drum flap on a mixer truck, custom engineered by the Schwing Stetter (UK) team.

Apparently the client was so impressed they have ordered a whole lot more of them!

You can see how it works here below. The first video was taken before the safety guard was attached so you can see the workings. The second is after it was put on.






See more about our customisation on our website here: http://www.schwing-stetter.co.uk/Pages/Customisation.aspxhttp://www.schwing-stetter.co.uk/Pages/Customisation.aspx.