Pumps Help to Improve Waste Handling

The Ford Engine plant in Dagenham is not the type of site you usually associate with an application for a Vaughan chopper pump as these powerful, heavy-duty pumps are more likely to be found operating at sewage treatment works around the UK. However, motor manufacturing, like any major process involves its own unique solids pumping challenges. For example, how to handle the difficult combination of swarf, cutting oils and coolants being collected from huge CNC machines operating on engine and transmission manufacture.

The origins of the application began in the late 1990’s when Vaughan supplied an initial trial pump to a Michigan based OEM filter systems manufacturer. The pump was to be tested to see how it would perform against the conventional method of handling waste material and coolant collected from CNC machines. The design and operational characteristics of the Vaughan pump provided an effective, all-in-one combination of shredder and pump which could handle all the ingredients of the machine waste, affectionately known as ‘pump backs’ in the industry.

Fast forward to 2005 and Vaughan’s Huntingdon based UK distributor P&M Pumps (UK) became involved with the supply of 74 bespoke design V3M ‘pump back’ pumping systems for similar waste handling applications at Ford’s UK engine plant sites at Dagenham and Port Talbot.

These pumps were supplied from Detroit and then the packaged system was fabricated and built in the UK by P&M Pumps. They were then shipped to the German CNC manufacturer for eventual delivery and installation at the Ford UK sites. Today, approximately 175 Vaughan pumps are, in the words of Ford Motor Company’s engineers, “performing flawlessly” on the waste handling pump applications associated with their huge machine tool process.