Dust and fume extraction specialist, Extractly Ltd, has recently completed the installation and commissioning of a comprehensive new dust extraction system to maintain a safe, clean workspace for North Somerset-based Sweet Joinery Ltd – one of the most successful and respected joinery firms in South West England.
Although Sweet Joinery Ltd was incorporated as recently as 2017, the business has family roots going back over five decades. Company founder, Dan Sweet, started his career in the early 2000s as an apprentice carpenter for his grandfather’s company, H. Sweet & Sons, and later went on to manage the firm’s specialist joinery shop. In 2019, Sweet Joinery’s rapid expansion was bolstered with the acquisition of Woodhill Joinery, another local family concern, also established back in the 1970s.
In addition to a collection of traditional woodworking tools that are typically employed in the crafting of bespoke kitchen cabinetry and window frames, the company’s workshop, located just a few miles southwest of Bristol, houses a comprehensive range of high-performance production machinery, including a Biesse Rover machining centre, Hebrock Edgebander and Altendorf F45 Panel Saw, along with SCM Spindle Moulder and Planer Thicknesser, and a Sedgwick Tenoner. This comprehensive set-up, teamed with a dedicated and experienced workforce, has enabled Sweet Joinery to build an enviable reputation for high-quality bespoke joinery for their clients in the retail, education and transport sectors.
As Dan Sweet explained: “To eliminate our wood waste disposal costs and to get ‘free’ heating for the workshop in the process, we wanted to install a modern, efficient, waste wood burner. However, to effectively filter and collect all the wood waste material our machines were producing, which was necessary to make the installation viable, it was obvious that our existing extraction would require something of an upgrade. After discussing our requirements with other colleagues in the industry, it was recommended that we should contact Extractly for advice.”
The advice was provided by UK Sales Manager for Extractly and Ecogate, Ian Rayner: “This was a challenging but really interesting project to be involved with”, says Ian. “Key to the success of the installation was going to be a new and more efficient filter unit, including a more powerful main fan, but space and access at the site was particularly restricted. The wood burner was being installed internally, at the rear of the workshop, along with a high-powered Reinbold Shredder, and there was just enough space here to site the 30kW ATEX fan unit we’d specified to provide the necessary maximum airflow volume of 17,000m³/hr. This would provide effective extraction from all the current machinery, plus a margin of extra capacity for future additions, but siting the filter was going to require a more complex operation, as space in front of the factory needed to be kept clear for delivery vehicles and personnel access, and a narrow passageway to the rear of the premises had already been earmarked for a vast, externally-located silo which would store the collected waste before feeding it to the new burner.”
The solution Extractly’s design engineers provided was for the new filter unit to be mounted on top of the silo. The unit selected for the task was an LBR-S HJ2 reverse air baghouse weighing in at around 2 tonnes. The unit is fitted with XT15 ‘Superbag’ filter media, and two 1.1kW regeneration fans provide filter cleaning. The modular, galvanised steel housing, with a 2.4m x 2.4m square footprint and around 6 metres tall, was craned-in over the roof of the factory and fixed into place above the silo. “The positioning of the filter unit is actually ideal”, Ian Rayner remarked. “Collected waste is discharged from below the hopper, then delivered directly into the silo, pressure-free, via an ATEX rotary valve.”
The installation not only provides Sweet Joinery with a renewable heating source and cuts the cost of woodwaste disposal, but it’s also a great way for the business to reduce its carbon footprint. And, to ensure the company derives maximum cost savings and reduces its carbon footprint even further, Ian Rayner also put forward a proposal to include Ecogate® energy-saving technology to control the dust extraction system.
“In common with all workshops involved in the production of bespoke joinery, the machines at Sweet Joinery are never all in use at the same time, so demand for extraction is continually changing throughout the working day.”
With an ‘On-Demand’ Ecogate® system controlling the extraction system, a sensor fitted to each machine monitors machine usage and sends a signal to the Ecogate® greenBOX controller whenever an individual machine comes on or off line. In turn, the greenBOX controller, via the Ecogate® PowerMASTER™ Variable Speed Drive unit, immediately adjusts the fan speed to exactly match the change in demand; reducing power consumption, and obviously saving on electricity costs. However, the level of savings a company like Sweet Joinery can achieve are quite significant, as Ian went on to explain: “By taking advantage of the Laws of Physics, Ecogate® technology can typically reduce electricity usage by at least 50% when the fan speed is reduced by as little as 20%. This sort of saving is easily achieved when machine usage is varying throughout the day and, when it’s break-time and all machines shut down, the fan also shuts down – automatically.”
In conclusion, Dan Sweet commented: “We were really pleased with the installation team from Extractly; they worked efficiently around us, and I found them to be professional and very flexible when delays on other equipment installations inevitably impacted their installation work schedules.”
