PERMEX OIL DISPENSING SYSTEM SERVES WET AND DRY ENGINES AT NEW DIESEL PLANT

A Line-Side oil filling system specially developed by Permex Ltd is helping production of specialist diesel engines at a new Peterborough plant.

The project represents a joint venture between two of the best known names in diesel engine design and manufacture - Shibaura of Japan and Perkins Diesel of Great Britain. The new Perkins-Shibaura factory will produce small specialist diesel engines for application in boats, compressors, generators etc on the international market.

Engines are made in a wide range of types and sizes - well over 150 variants are offered - and a sophisticated bar coding system is used to track each engine unit through the manufacturing process and to trigger the correct response from associated plant including the Permex oil filling system.

Perkins-Shibaura engines are supplied to the market either "wet" i.e. with oil, or in "dry" condition. However, all units must be filled with oil prior to testing before leaving the factory. The Permex system is thus designed to fill each engine prior to testing and to subsequently extract oil from those units destined to leave the factory in "dry" condition.

The filling system comprises two standard Permex oil metering lines each incorporating an industrial flowmeter. Each meter is linked to a Permex OilWatch dispensing "slave" unit, which is in turn linked to a master controller. A bar code reader is provided to transmit data to the slave unit.

Two types of oil are dispensed - multigrade for those engines which will be delivered in "wet" format and general grade for "dry" engines which will have the oil extracted prior to leaving the factory. Oil is supplied to the filling system from two outside storage tanks each fitted with an air operated pump and low level alarm system.

Bar code information is stored in the master controller as a "look up table" with the batch quantities and oil type required for each engine. This information is downloaded to the OilWatch "slave" dispensers on initiation of the sequence by the bar code reader. Oil filling is carried out by manual operation of the Permex dispensing probes, which feature locking rings and spring-loaded, minimum drip nozzles.

Once filled with oil, the diesel engines move on by conveyor to the test cell where they are run in accordance with a pre-set sequence.

At the exit from the test bay a further bar code reader detects those engines which require emptying prior to despatch. The Permex system achieves this by means of an air operated diaphragm pump and dip tube system which removes the oil via the dipstick orifice and returns it through associated pipework to the relevant outside storage tank which is protected by a high level alarm.

Permex designed and manufactured the complete system on a turnkey project basis.

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