June 2019

HYDRAULICS Marine-i grant powers Armada’s latest development Armada Engineering, a global leader in marine hydraulics, is developing a new powerpack for marine applications, with the aid of a £27,000 grant from Marine-i. Part funded by the European Regional Development Fund, Marine-i is designed to help the marine tech sector in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly grow through harnessing the full potential of research and innovation. Armada Engineering has used its many years of experience in complex marine hydraulics to devise a mobile powerpack that can be deployed for a wide range of marine maintenance tasks, including hydraulic flushing. Joff Collins, managing director, Marine-i, believes it will offer many advantages over conventional equipment. “We currently supply a range of electric power packs and flushing packs into the marine sector, operating as standalone units,“ he said. “This new power pack is fitted with an intelligent HMI interface and Telematics. It will be diesel driven, enabling it to operate in virtually any location and it has built-in genset and compressed air capabilities. As a result, Armada’s powerpack will provide a ‘one-stop solution’ for many different types of marine O&M tasks.” Matt Hodson, marine hub operations director at Cornwall Development Company and a partner in Marine-i, said: “This is a brilliant concept which will appeal across many marine sectors, including the offshore, superyacht, shipping, and commercial fishing markets. It is loaded with added-value features for the customer, like Geofence for anti-theft measures and real-time reporting of key data such as fuel consumption, run time and fault diagnosis. A product like this has the potential to open up important new global markets for Armada Engineering.” Collins added: “The grant from Marine-i is crucial for us. It means we can move quickly on to the next stage, which is the design and construction of a working prototype. We had previously sought investment from the private sector, but this is a very specialised area of marine technology which very few investors understand. That presented a real obstacle to getting the project off the ground. Thankfully, the expert team at Marine-i could see the possibilities for our concept, and now we can power forward with its development.” www.marine-i.co.uk CAD-generated drawing of the Armada Engineering powerpack. Conta-Clip now offers a combination of a hydraulic hand pump and sheet-metal punching tool. Users can thereby produce breakouts in control cabinets for KDSClick, KDS-FB, KDS-KV, and KES cable entries within a few minutes. The hydraulic hand pump contains no hose and features a user- friendly, compact design. It weighs only 2 kg. The hydraulic cylinder can be rotated and swiveled by 360° along three axes, allowing for flexible use even in hard-to-reach places. The punching tool includes round hole punchers for all diameters from M20 to M63 for KDS-KV separable cable glands and square and rectangular hole punchers for all KDSClick, KDS-FB, and KES cable entries as well as for 110 by 131 mm KDS-FP flange plates. In order to create a break-out in a sheet- metal enclosure, the hydraulically operated draw bolt is inserted in a bore hole. Next, stamp and matrix are fixed with counter nuts both on the inside and outside. When operated, the draw bolt pulls stamp and matrix towards each other, producing the opening in the required size. The built-in punch-hole marking tip can be used to clearly punch-mark the drill points for screw-on attachment of the cable entry. Stamps are available for 3 mm sheet steel and 2 mm stainless steel. www.conta-clip.com Sheet-metal puncher with hydraulic hand pump 30 HYDRAULICS & PNEUMATICS June 2019 www.hpmag.co.uk