Rebuilt Blower Program
Southeastern Pneumatic, located in Ellaville Georgia, and Southwestern Pneumatic, located in Kyle Texas, are both considered by our customers and our equipment manufactures as world class facilities serving the mobile dry bulk markets, utilizing standard and sophisticated pneumatic equipment. We earned this distinction by incorporating both of our state of the art facilities with a staff of experienced technicians along with utilizing specialized equipment to machine, inspect, test, measure, and assemble blowers and vacuum pumps. Our technicians have received extensive training through the Gardner Denver factory training programs, resulting in our technicians receiving qualified factory authorized certifications to repair and rebuild Gardner Denver blowers and vacuum pumps. These training programs are essential for a customer to receive a properly repaired or rebuilt blower or vacuum pump. Without these programs, the proper documentation procedures and tolerance specifications cannot be known.
Southeastern and Southwestern Pneumatic are also uniquely staffed with select people that have considerable experience having worked within Gardner Denver’s organization for Positive Displacement blowers and the Vacuum pumps technical and service departments for several years. These qualified people bring a unique aspect to performing their forensic inspection of blowers and vacuum pumps, coupled with significant knowledge and experience in repairing and rebuilding these products per the manufactures specifications and guideline procedures. Along with these skilled technicians our facilities are equipped with specialized equipment ( fixtures, dedicated inspection gauges and fixtures for measuring rotors, cylinders, and end plates, along with machine tools accessibility capable of maintaining .0002” tolerances) that we utilize to ensure that each blower is rebuilt and or repaired to exacting factory specifications. Each blower or vacuum pump once rebuilt or repaired undergoes a multifunctional testing procedure to measure the unit’s capabilities. It is our philosophy that you cannot control what you cannot measure, therefore we incorporate specialized measuring tools to qualify all components throughout the rebuilding and testing procedures, yielding the best product for our customers. This proven process has allowed Southeastern and Southwestern Pneumatic to provide our customer the same one year warranty as Gardner Denver applies to a new blower.
Southeastern and Southwestern Pneumatic implement a very structured procedure to accomplish a properly repaired or rebuilt blower or vacuum pump. Upon receiving a blower or vacuum pump in either facility, in all cases a preliminary evaluation is performed by one of our certified technicians as to the current status of the unit as received. Such as heat plug intact, hot spots on the blower, lubrication issues, etc. In addition, documentation from the customer has already been submitted to the technicians to inform the technicians in the facility as to the customer’s knowledge as to what caused the problem. This evaluation, along with detailed documentation and pictures, is then provided to the customer so that the proper course of action can then be enacted upon as to whether the blower or vacuum pump is to be tested first for the unit’s functionality, reviewed for warranty consideration, or if the customer wants a complete disassembly of the unit for repair or complete rebuild, always with the customer’s involvement and agreement as to the course of action.
Because of our enhanced inspection methods Southeastern and Southwestern Pneumatic can offer to our customer’s additional options with regards to blower or Vacuum pump failure or replacement, such as our exchange program or a new blower or vacuum pump in a more timely fashion minimizing the customers down time.
Should the customers instructions call for a complete unit tear down the technician will clean the unit and its parts utilizing a bead blasting process. This cleaning process will allow for precision measurements for the inspection process. The cylinder housing after cleaning is placed in a specialized fixture to enable specific tolerance measurements to be achieved utilizing micrometers and dial indicators. This inspection will also verify if the cylinder has been twisted beyond acceptable tolerances. The end plates go through the same stringent criteria as cylinder but also include bearing bores and sealing or machined surfaces, to ensure that the parts can be used in the repair or rebuild process. The rotors are also placed in a very specialized fixture to allow for specific measurements for outside diameters, bent shaft conditions, threaded areas, bearing surfaces and key ways, along with proper alignment to the adjoining rotor to name a few. These inspections and measurements are critical and are specified by the manufacturer and must be maintained in order to allow for blower operation. Machining operations are accomplished in our Kyle Texas facility by a qualified and experience machinist. The tolerances specified by the manufacturer and demanded by the parts for proper operation can only be achieved by utilizing extremely accurate machining processes and a skilled machinist. The operation may require grinding, boring, milling, sizing bearing journals , correcting threads just to mention a few. We achieve these machining operations utilizing radial drills, precision lathes, mills, and O.D. grinder. Once the blower parts are ready for assembly, only our certified technicians, put the parts into a special fixture to verify that proper assembly can be achieved this eliminates risk of assembly issues and ensures quality.
The procedure continues always with our certified technicians by installing a new over haul kit (spacers, bearings, gaskets, fasteners etc.) – in the assembly process the stringent manufacturing specifications for example: gear backlash, rotor to rotor, end plate clearances, rotor to cylinder housing tolerances are checked and maintained throughout the controlled process. When the assembly process is completed the unit is then moved to the final testing fixture where the unit receives an extensive testing procedure incorporating loaded conditions to validate the unit’s performance. Our test stands are equipped with both diesel engine and electrical restate controlled motors. These test stands allow our technicians to bring the unit being tested to proper operating speed, temperature, and pressures at specific intervals allowing the technician to monitor established manufactures specifications. The test results are recorded and entered into the units file referencing the units serial number and model for future references. The unit is then ship back to the customer or to one of our facilities to be installed on the customer’s equipment.
Southeastern Pneumatic and Southwestern Pneumatic take great pride in our facilities, products, procedures and our experienced personnel. It is our belief that our rigid standards and our solutions orientation along with our commitment to our customer is how we have earned our world class reputation and continued success. We stand behind our products, our repaired and rebuilt blowers and vacuum pumps. This is evident by us providing the same warranty on our rebuilt blower program as what is offered on a new blower or vacuum pump.
We appreciate your business! You are important to us and would welcome your call with questions or to provide solutions to your needs.