UKRay Report post Posted November 11, 2010 Today I took delivery of a shiny new (okay, factory reconditioned) 20 ton Atom clicking press - see pictures below. I'm not exaggerating when I say I'm still amazed it happened at all, let alone had a happy outcome. It all started at 6am when I saw the early weather forecast - torrential rain and high winds were predicted at precisely the time my machine was booked to arrive. At 8-30am the Hi-Ab lorry arrived, but I had struck lucky. The driver/operator was a great guy with a very dry sense of humour and amazing crane operating skills but the real luck was that the rain stopped falling and the wind stopped blowing. We decided to make a quick start and get things moving. By 9.15am my very old (and very lovely) treadle operated clicking press had been lifted out of my workshop and was poked into a waiting van. By 9.30 it was being driven away by its new owners. A real result! Meanwhile the two engineers from Hawkes Technical (see: www.hawkestechnical.com ) sent to install the new press had turned up with the machine, carefully wrapped in plastic sheeting, on the back of their truck. It was the work of minutes to hook up the crane, lift the thing twenty foot into the air, swing it over my fence and onto a waiting (steel re-inforced) pallet bridge that spanned the door step and provided a route for the pallet ruck to run on. Minutes later the guys hauled the new press, physically, in through the workshop door. At that point the wind and rain started up again and it has got progressively worse as the day has gone on. I didn't care, we were under cover. First job was to install the three phase converter to change my ordinary domestic supply and make it work with the three phase motor on the clicking press. On advice, i had purchased a brand new unit from a company called Motorun in Teddington Middlesex - see www.motorun.co.uk Suffice to say it wasn't quite powerful enough for the clicking press 2hp motor and made some weird clicking noises of its own. I called the owner, Dave, and explained the problem and he talked the engineers through a temporary fix but promised to exchange the unit for a more powerful one asap. Great service and a good man to do business with. The engineers spent a good hour with me showing me how to get the best from the machine and telling me which bits to keep an eye on and how to get out of trouble if I got into any - only a matter of time really... By 2pm everything was in place so I called Sara Underwood, the managing director at Hawkes Technical, to tell her everything was working as it should and to make the final money transfer. From start to finish the whole process had taken just seven days. Now that is what I call service! With the engineers out of the way, I set to and cut up a huge box of scrap as I rapidly learned how to use the machine properly. By 5pm I was confident that it was all going to be fine but I'm now absolutely exhausted. I hadn't realised how stressful the process was going to be and hadn't allowed for the fact that I had almost no control over events once they started happening. I just had to ride the wave and see where it went. Not at all easy for a confirmed control freak like me LOL! Has anyone else had a delivery day to remember? Ray Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
dirtclod Report post Posted November 11, 2010 Hi Ray, Lucky you getting a new toy !! Santa Claus came early to your house. But then again if he brought it on Christmas Eve he wouldn't had room for anything else..LOL. Looks like your new clicker has a new room / shop to live in to. I can't belive you took all of the fun out of it by getting a crane to set on your porch. It would been more fun to get it on the porch with a couple of strong friends...LOL. John Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Ferg Report post Posted November 11, 2010 With the engineers out of the way, I set to and cut up a huge box of scrap as I rapidly learned how to use the machine properly. By 5pm I was confident that it was all going to be fine but I'm now absolutely exhausted. I hadn't realised how stressful the process was going to be and hadn't allowed for the fact that I had almost no control over events once they started happening. I just had to ride the wave and see where it went. Not at all easy for a confirmed control freak like me LOL! Has anyone else had a delivery day to remember? Ray I do not often reflect on our experience with delivery of a machine. We had become a pretty good sized company selling product to 25 -30 major catalog companies with 25 employees. We had bought a two head CNC Router in 1989. Business required that we buy another machine. The new machine was built to our specifications as was the first. The original, we still have and use it every day. The new machine had a vacuum table measuring 4' x 12', you could use half of the table or all of it. Two 20 horse power motors, speed control continuously variable to 30,000 rpm. I had 150 Amps of three phase power wired up for it. The day came for machine to be delivered. I was so nervous couldn't sleep the night before. We had made arrangements with a crane operator to off load and install the machine and computer controls. Manufacturer was to send the unit on a flat bed trailer so we could allow the crane to attach the slings easily. They sent it in a closed truck and all the way to the front of a 54' trailer. Crane operator pulled the machine to the back of the trailer, reattached the slings, lifted it and moved towards the ram going into our shop. The machine was out of balance in the slings, flipped upside down and crashed to the concrete ramp. I pulled the overhead door down, called the company, told them their truck was returning with a pile of broken metal. Long story short. We had made a downpayment on the machine, never got any of it back, $150,000 in the machinery alone with another $25,000 in other equipment to enable it, the crane operator wound up in court, the machinery company got $2000 from him, he is in a mental institution, financially disabled as well. We continued in business and tried to put all this behind us. Almost 25 years later we are still in business. What else could we ask for? How about the crane operator having his nealth and family back. ferg Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
celticleather Report post Posted November 12, 2010 We once had a printing press that slid out of the lifting sling and rolled into the managing director's car . . . made quite a mess of both press and car! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
