Customer Requirements
Tufcot are very proud to work with Blue Ocean Industries who are our Key Customer in Australia, meaning they have the exclusive rights to sell Tufcot® throughout Australia.
Blue Ocean Industries were contacted by a customer in North Queensland involved in civil contracting in the marine industry.
The customer required wear pads for fitment of a spud carrier system on a dredge.
It was very important to improve the service life of the wear pad. The customer had been less than satisfied with the previous wear pad so had contacted the dredge manufacturer in Europe who recommended changing to Tufcot® T100MP.
The customer took 3D scans and the wear pads were reversed engineered and 3D modelled.
The replacement wear pads had to be CNC machined to match the contours of the surface of the carrier so that they seated correctly when installed.
The Tufcot Solution
This particular piece of dredge equipment spends the majority of its service life in a saltwater environment, so the material had to be able to withstand these extreme conditions.
Much of the time, these wear pads would have been either fully submerged in rougher seas but could also spend large amounts of time where they were open to the elements, depending on the sea conditions and extreme temperatures in Northern Queensland.
Using Tufcot® T100MP in this application would ensure that the service life of the wear pad was not adversely affected by these changing conditions.
Tufcot® T100MP performs equally well in dry and wet conditions due to its self-lubricating characteristics. This ensures that the wear pads are effective in operation whenever they are put into use and provides a maintenance-free solution.
In this case, Blue Ocean Industries’ close relationship with Tufcot Engineering helped to ensure that the raw materials were sourced and on hand in the shortest possible lead time to accommodate the tight maintenance turnaround required.
The wear pads were machined to the required 3D contouring thanks to Blue Ocean Industries’ state-of-the-art CNC machine shop which ensured hassle-free installation on site.
