After the successful commissioning of 3x Niehoff D1252’s double twist bunching machines and their associated equipment at Southwire, Florence, AL, Niehoff then asked if I could travel to Southwires other factory in Carrolton, GA, to take over the installation lead role for a D2002 and PTD1000 production lines.
This machine type is new to the Niehoff lineup, there have only been two previous, one in Finland, and another in the USA, both of which I have worked on, and helped to optimise and further develop.
This machine turned out to be the biggest, and definitely the most impressive machine I have commissioned to date. In total, over 100m long, and capable of producing cables comprising of up to 61 separate wires, and a maximum diameter of 400mm² at 500 twists per minute. A seriously impressive piece of machinery.
Together with the support of Niehoffs own engineers and technicians, we have made some really great progress with the development of this machine, mainly its automated load / unload system, and it actually makes me quite proud to see it working in a real production environment.
I was initially onsite for a period of 5 weeks until the Christmas break, before then returning in January for another 5 weeks to finish off the commissioning, and to hand the machine over to another happy customer.