SA Recycling’s Ship Loader Pan Gets Innovative Redesign
Leads to Increased Efficiency and Reduced Downtime
SA Recycling commissioned SSAB® engineering for a redesign of their ship loader pan to allow for an 80-degree tipping angle. The world-leading metal recycling and processing company was looking to load ships faster and more efficiently, without debris getting stuck in the pan.
“Our old skip loading pan is heavier and thicker with a lot of parts welded together,” explained Moises Figueroa, SA Recycling’s Regional General Manager. “It requires a lot of welding because it cracks, definitely bends, so it gives us a lot of downtime. Therefore, we were looking for options to see how we could keep the size, get more volume and lighten it up.”
With blueprints in place, SA Recycling turned to Cutting Edge Supply for the actual custom fabrication of the loader pan, which measured approximately 16 feet wide, nearly 22 feet long and 14 1⁄2 feet tall and weighed 30,400 pounds. As the largest Hardox® Wear Parts dealer in North America and a Hardox® Certified Expert Shop, our team was more than up for the challenge.
Cutting Edge Supply leveraged the superior and abrasive-resistant Hardox® 500 Tuf steel plate for the build. Hardox® 500 Tuf maintains the high strength, high hardness and toughness needed, while reducing the dry weight of the pan and allowing for an increased payload capacity.
“This new one is a lot thinner and doesn’t have that many welds all over the place,” said Figueroa. “It’s lasting longer and it easier to maintain. The main savings for us is the weight. We can put more scrap in the pan and load more efficiently. We’re definitely going to be saving about 25% of the time it takes us to load the ships. Our downtime has been reduced substantially.”
The newly designed skip pan loader takes jabs and impact, is 25% or 5 tons lighter, with increased overall capacity and requires about 25% less time to load outbound ships. This lightweight version with fewer welds, adds safety factors and reduces maintenance without unplanned downtime.
Learn more about the project in the video below, and for even more details on how this project came together, read the full case study from Hardox®.