The new Shukuma Bricks plant will be producing 95 000 pavers per nine-hour shift to best-practice quality standards, confirms Jacques Bellingham, managing director of Shukuma Bricks. “We are in the process of applying for the SABS mark in accordance with SANS1215 and SANS1058 standards,” Bellingham reveals.
Pan Mixers South Africa (PMSA) has supplied its largest precast concrete brick and block making machine the RE-1400 to Shukuma Bricks for its new manufacturing plant at Greenbushes in Port Elizabeth.
The RE-1400 has a fully automated production capacity of up to 165 000 standard stock bricks per nine-hour shift. It offers a range of batching configurations, wet and dry side production handling and production board handling, according to Quintin Booysen, PMSA marketing and sales manager.
All products are tested at Shukuma Bricks’ fully-equipped in-house laboratory to ensure compliance with SABS standards.
“One of the advantages of the RE-1400 is that it allows us to change moulds swiftly and effortlessly using the mould changing arm. This ensures speedy turnaround times when switching between the manufacture of various products such as blocks, stock bricks, maxi bricks and pavers,” Bellinghan highlights.
The plant also has a topping feed for colouring the top layer of pavers. Moreover, production parameters can be changed using a touch screen interface while the machine is in operation. This gives Shukuma Bricks the flexibility to be able to adapt to changing moisture content and aggregate consistency instantly without having to stop the production cycle.
Moisture in the aggregate is compensated for by use of microwave moisture-sensing measurement probes in the aggregates and mixer. The RE-1400 comes standard with linear transducers and servo-proportional hydraulic valves which provide high-performance closed loop control. Two (or an optional four) 7.5 kW shaft vibrators allow vertical directional vibration, while a variable speed drive provides frequency control.
Shukuma Bricks’ wet-side conveying system is fitted with a quality testing station which rejects product that fails the required standard. Wet concrete can easily be returned to the mixing station. A rotary brush cleans the fine edging on top of the hollow blocks, resulting in a perfect finish every time. Newly-formed wet blocks can be pre-sprayed with a fine mist spray to add additional surface water where required.
The plant boasts fully automated pallet and product handling. Wet blocks or other products on the production board are stacked up in a stacker (elevator). Once a fully loaded set of bricks or blocks has been accumulated, it is then transferred onto racks in the curing chamber.
Before strapping the day-old blocks or bricks, these are packed onto a slat conveyor using a packer head that automatically stacks the products into the correct pack size, ready for strapping, which is a fully automated process. After strapping, the slat conveyor transports the products to the outside storage yard for further curing.
The whole plant is monitored and managed from the control room by means of a supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system. This provides visual animated graphics of the machine and plant operation. Machine parameter control and data capture allow for remote control of the plant, in addition to retaining historic and daily data for plant management.
