At Riverside Wood Products (RWP), Extractly have carried out a significant upgrade and reconfiguration of the company’s dust extraction system, including the installation of energy-saving ‘extraction on-demand’ technology.
Headed up by Paul Sullivan, RWP is a well-established, family-owned joinery shop offering a wide range of machining services. As well as processing high volumes of panels and ‘cut & edge’ boards, plus timber components in all shapes and sizes, the company also undertakes everything from carcassing and assembly work, to individual bespoke furniture projects.
For over a decade the company had enjoyed steady and continuous growth in the relative comfort of a 9,000sq. ft. workshop. In more recent years, however, having invested in several new machines to keep pace with the demands of an ever-expanding order book, the company’s workshop was bulging at the seams. In early 2024, when the adjacent warehouse space unexpectedly became vacant, Paul Sullivan took the decision to literally ‘knock through to next door’ and has more than doubled the available floor space.
The now vastly improved production facility includes an impressive line-up of Homag machinery: including several CNC machining centres, plus a couple of edge banders, as well as a horizontal beam saw. “When all these high-speed machines are in operation, the need for an equally efficient dust extraction system is obviously essential”, says Paul Sullivan. “This reorganisation of the factory presented us with the perfect opportunity to upgrade and reconfigure the system as we relocated the various machines.”
Extractly’s Sales Director, Jake Oldfield, had initially been invited to assess the company’s requirements for a completely new extraction system, including the supply and installation of a new filter unit. They acquired a substantial pre-owned filter unit, complete with a 75kW main extraction fan. “Installing new ductwork throughout the factory and getting the whole system to work safely and efficiently with a second-hand filter unit, was definitely a job best left to the professionals,” said Paul.
Extractly’s Jake Oldfield added: “This was a sizeable project for Extractly and, because the fan and filter Paul had installed was probably powerful enough to extract from a factory twice the size, our revised proposal also included for the supply and installation of Ecogate® energy-saving ‘On-Demand’ extraction control technology.” Without Ecogate® installed, the main fan would be operating at full power, throughout the working day, with a total annual electricity consumption estimated at around 180,000kW.
However, with an Ecogate® greenBOX controller continuously monitoring individual machine usage and, via the Ecogate® PowerMASTER™, continually adjusting fan speed to exactly match extraction demand, huge reductions in electricity consumption are possible – resulting in correspondingly significant cost savings.
Although the Ecogate® system is configured to control electricity usage at current production levels, it has more than enough capacity in reserve to continue providing efficient extraction if RWP invest in further new machinery. The Ecogate® greenBOX installed at Riverside is the highly intelligent ‘Nxt’ model which has the capacity to control the operation of an extraction system with multiple main fans and up to 72 individual workstations, so the extraction system is now effectively ‘future-proofed’. The Nxt controller has an industrial PC onboard, and a built-in web server provides remote access for fast, automated software updates. In addition, with systems controlled by a greenBOX Nxt, the processor integrated into each 24V DC motorised ‘Smart’ damper provides reports on pressure, air velocity, and air volume and, to ensure employees’ safety, minimal airflow is automatically managed across the entire ductwork system to reduce the risk of fire or explosion.
“I had a lot of confidence in the team from Extractly”, explains Paul. “In the past we’ve probably been guilty of just going with the cheapest quote for extraction work, but once bitten, twice shy, and Extractly’s on-site installation engineers, led by experienced Operations Director, Graham Day, were a credit to the company.”
