Murex Welding Solutions : Major Exporter

Welding Solutions

MAJOR EXPORTER OF ROADSWEEPERS RELIES TOTALLY ON MUREX WELDING EQUIPMENT

Exporting 60% of its production to just about every country worldwide means that roadsweeper manufacturer, Johnston Engineering, needs to be able to depend on all its production processes. Nowhere is this more important than on the welding equipment used for the roadsweeper fabrication. The company relies heavily on Murex Transmig 353 machines to provide the reliability with high performance required for all the welding carried out on its three manufacturing sites.

Having easily set 40-step voltage controls, spot weld timers and 2/4 stroke torch latching facilities to allow high performance with modern wires and gasses, the Transmig welding power units are designed to offer optimum performance with 1.0 and 1.2mm diameter solid and cored wires. They are able to provide welding capacity up to 350A at 60% or 380A at 50% duty.

The 500, 600 and 700 series truck-mounted machines produced by Johnston are all made to order, each customer having individual requirements for options such as litter snatches, street washing and hand washing facilities, reversing cameras and bleepers, LH and RH drive, as well as dual or single steer. Smaller precinct type sweepers are also manufactured to customer order, again with various options available.

The truck-mounted machines are produced in two forms - totally finished machines, where all bodywork and sweeping gear is attached to the chassis and driven to the customer, and ESU's (Export Skid Units) that make up the majority of export orders. The ESU's consist of all bodywork and auxiliary engines, mounted onto a sub-chassis, that are shipped abroad ready to be mounted on to the customers own vehicle chassis.

In addition to exporting a large proportion of its production, including a large contract at present for Moscow City, Johnston also supplies 65% of all the roadsweepers used in the UK. Manufacture of the machines is carried out on three sites; at Dorking, Ashvale and Sittingbourne.

Having had welding machines from various manufacturers in the past, Johnston has come to appreciate the reliability under arduous conditions offered by the Transmig 353. Mr. John Grewcock, Fabrications Manager, explained, "When I started with the company about 10 years ago, we had a variety of welding machines of different origin. The Murex were definitely the most reliable, so over a period of time we changed them all to Murex. We work the machines hard - double day shifts, 16 hours a day, doing long runs on stainless, all very testing for the machines."

"We have got 20 Transmig machines at Ashvale, 14 at Dorking, and when we set up our new factory at Sittingborne for making the smaller sweepers, we automatically bought Murex, and now we have eight Transmigs there. All the machines have proved to be totally reliable and the service we get from Murex is always very good."