Rising to an engineering and marketing challenge
Over the years Flotronic Pumps successfully refined an innovative double diaphragm design. Refinement has included the development of a range of pumps that are ideal for handling aggressive chemicals but they are expensive to produce. This means they are not cheap to buy … and so you have little if any penetration of the lucrative lower flow rate aggressive chemical duty range market where budgets can be tighter.“It’s a classic engineering and marketing dilemma,” says Leighton Jones, Director of Technical Sales and Service at Flotronic Pumps. “We were struggling to produce a smaller version of our standard Chemflo pump at a competitive price which was frustrating for customers preferring Flotronic’s air-operated double diaphragm ‘ONE-NUT’ pumps over competitors’ traditional designs.”
Chief Engineer Peter Wheal knew that a reduction in production costs would need radical re-thinking of Flotronic’s existing design and that he also needed to produce a stylish and functional pump that would overcome the inherent mechanical instability of PTFE as a load bearing material. The answer was to machine the new pump – named ‘Minichem’ - out of one solid block of PTFE.
“This removed the need for separate manifolds and a steel outer casing,” says Peter. “The Minichem is not only cheaper, but also extremely safe with any leakage contained internally. Challenge met!”
Enter √ at www.engineerlive.com/epe
Flotronic Pumps Ltd is based in Bolney, Haywards Heath, West Sussex, UK. www.flotronicpumps.co.uk
