Swash No Buckle

A bit earlier I was asked to gather up some information about pump pressures with regard to the angle of the swash plate. Now not being an engineer, this term went straight over my head and so Hughie, the MD very kindly took some time to show me what this meant.

I had seen plenty of hydraulic system drives (the bit that that turns engine revs into hydraulic oil being pushed around the system) but had never known how one worked. I am pleased to say that now one more of the many wonders of hydraulic engineering has  been revealed to me, and very interesting it is too!

Basically a circle of cylinders and pistons connected to an angled plate spins. Both the cylinder block and the angled 'swash' plate spin at the same time so the swash plate pulls the pistons in and out as each cylinder/piston moves around the circle. The changeable angle of the plate determines how much the pistons actually move in and out for each revolution.

The pistons moving away from and out of the cylinder block are drawing hydraulic oil into those cylinder while the ones moving back into it are pushing the oil out, having brought it around to the other side, and so oil is forced to move continuously from one side to the other. Ingenious!

Seeing (and have a play with) the cut away working demonstration one above really helped me to understand what was going on. So now next time someone talks about the angle of the swash plate, I'll know what they mean.

Raising Knowledge

Last Friday we had the chap from Tams come to re-certify our staff on the fork lift and the gantry crane.

We timed it rather well as a couple of people would have had their cards run out the following day.

With a great deal of very heavy items being moved about constantly, it is important we have all our workshop and supervisory staff qualified to use the lifting and carrying equipment. We need everyone to be able to lend a hand from time to time to move items about. In these situations a small mistake can lead to a big accident. And as the MD puts it, it's far cheaper and easier to pay to get everyone qualified properly than to explain to someone's mother that their son had an accident using some equipment they didn't fully know how to use.

This is all an ongoing process. As some staff members had been called away to assist clients on Friday we will need to repeat the process again in a few weeks to cover those who were not there.

And then there's the welding certification coming up soon too!

Filling the Space

It's not often that we have rows of empty shelves and storage space in our parts warehouse but we've got some now due to a major reorganisation of our parts storage. Towards the beginning of the year we expanded the warehouse area by extending the mezzanine floor over the reception area and now with everything moved about we have put more shelving into the newly created space.

The reason for all this? It's all because of the wonderful new Schwing 'Reptor' S 38 SX mobile concrete pump that we are now selling!


When we add a new machine to the Schwing concrete pumping arsenal, we need to make sure that we keep our promise to have the full list of necessary spare parts available, as we do across our entire range of products. That's why Schwing Stetter can usually get you up and running again within hours of a breakdown.

So the new shelves will soon be stocked with S 38 SX parts, and you'll soon be able to order them - assuming you're lucky enough to have a new S 38 SX pump!

More Platforms

Such was the success of our new workshop mezzanine floor last year (and the new floor space over the new reception area) that we decided to add a double version at the other end of the workshop!

Once again the lads rose to the task and had the thing built and stocked in less than a month.

The view's not too bad from up there either!

A Great Reception

If there's one thing you can say about our engineers at Schwing Stetter, it's that they are versatile. We have recently been making some adjustments to the workshop area, extending the mezzanine floor and sprucing up the reception area. And it was none other than our own engineers who did the major work.

We now have quite bit more upstairs floor space to accommodate our expanding parts inventory, and a much nicer front reception area (as you can see above).

Here are a few photos from different stages of the work...

Staircase reversed

Our Engineers' steelwork taking shape

The floorboards down and the new reception desk

Extra space for more (genuine Schwing Stetter) parts storage

Our engineers even install signage (note the new ceiling is now in place too)!

My Lovely Mug

This morning we were the proud recipients of our new promotional coffee mugs! We have been drinking our hot beverages out of some very nice mugs (at the back here) up until now, its just that we though it would be nice to add a little humour and brightness to the experience. And so voilà - here they are!

The idea was two concrete pumps, a mobile pump and a static, pumping concrete round the mug endlessly and obliviously into each other's hoppers. The picture was cleverly executed by the chap who does our Christmas cards (we've been busy sorting those out too...) and the mug people even managed to make the image wrap all the way round going through the handle. Good work!

So now we have our new mugs, if that isn't a good excuse to visit Schwing Stetter for a nice new concrete pump I don't know what is!

New Platform

As we constantly strive for better ways to do things and increase our productivity, it was decided to make use of a whole lot of unused space a few metres above the floor in the back corner a create another mezzanine floor.

Robs design and workmanship once again came to the fore to build everything needed and over the last few weeks the whole thing was build and assembled from scratch. He was even able to tell me how weight each step was able to hold. Such a talented team we have...

The space to fill

Rob assembling the staircase

First part of steel structure in place

Structure taking shape

Flooring down

The view from the new platform

All finished

Old Pictures

When a firm has been going as long as this, you never know what you might find lurking around the place. Yesterday, while sorting something in one corner of the workshop I suddenly noticed three pictures propped up by a pipe again the wall.

My first thought was that they were paintings; the years of grime mixed with the slightly surreal colours of old images combined to remind me for a moment of some of my dad's old paintings in his workshop. A couple of seconds and a slightly closer inspection revealed them instead however to be photos of some of our pumps.

What I found really intriguing was the last one (at the bottom here). It was obviously a very old style pump. Scott (our chief engineer) vaguely recognised it as one of our old Screed pumps from the 1980s - possibly from before Schwing and Stetter had joined forces or Schwing had patented the Rock Valve (both happened in 1982).

Scott also mentioned that one of our long serving old employees, Jack, features in the one in front of Tower Bridge (click of the image to enlarge it).

A few minutes with a damp cloth and some paper towel managed to remove most of the dirt from the pictures and so I was able to get the shots of them here on the right before placing them back where I had found them, albeit a little cleaner and brighter.

Shut It

As part of our drive to modernise the workshop, yesterday saw the replacement of the decrepit old roller shutter with a brand spanking new one.

The battered old manual door (now a pile of scrap - pictured left) which took up extra space poking horizontally into the workshop when open has now been replaced with an all singing, all dancing (well all rolling anyway) new version (pictured right), bring us rolling into the 21st century, at least as far as entrance to the workshop is concerned.

All the better to present new concrete pumps and mixer trucks to the world from...


Update (12th June)

I had a message from a reader yesterday posing what I suppose is a fair question. He asks:

"does the new roller door in the workshop have anything to do with the tricks with the 36X a few weeks ago?"

He was of course referring to the demonstration of the flexibility of the boom on a Schwing S36X as shown here.

The answer is of course no! Our engineers are quite adept at manoeuvring large pieces of equipment about and pump booms is one of their specialities - as you would expect!

The old roller door has needed to be replaced for quite a while. It was costing money in maintenance and repairs and it's time had come.

Reaching Inside

We recently wanted to show how manoeuvrable the boom on one of our S36X mobile concrete pumps is. By way of demonstration we parked it near the entrance to our workshop and poked the boom in through the door to show how easily it can reach into an enclosed space.

As can be seen above the large rotation angle of the tip section (238° since you ask) not only makes it easy to steer the boom into such a space but also increases its flexibility once in place.

As you can also (just about) see, it was positioned using a radio remote (via a Vector control system) - so you can easily position yourself where you can best see what's going on.

I know that I was impressed!