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By the time Her majesty the Queen visited Scotland earlier
this year to officiate at the opening of the Falkirk Wheel - the world's first
rotating boat lift, work had already begun in Sheffield on the construction of a
second wheel. As work began, engineers and contractors were hopeful that they
would be able to complete the second wheel in a matter of weeks as opposed to
the five years of planning and two year construction schedule required at
Falkirk.
The project schedule for the second wheel would at first sight
appear extremely optimistic. Even allowing for the fact that all the engineering
design work had already been done and proven itself in Falkirk, all the
components still had to be manufactured and assembled in record time.
Alan Bullock, managing director of the appointed contractors
1-Off Engineers, was always confident that his company could hit the completion
deadline and commented; "… it was a great help to be working with Bennett
Associates who produced the designs for the original Falkirk Wheel. The fact
that our "Sheffield Wheel" was only one fiftieth the size of the Falkirk
original didn't necessarily make the task any easier. We still needed to
manufacture to extremely fine tolerances and at the end of the day we had to
deliver a Wheel that worked, was reliable and was also on time and within
budget. We were given a deadline for Bennett's first exhibition of the year and
managed to complete the project in about 10 weeks."
1-Off Engineers produced the highly detailed, working model of the
Falkirk Wheel for engineering consultants Bennett Associates. The model is being
used as the centrepiece of Bennett's exhibition stand at exhibitions around the
world over the next 12 months highlighting the company's involvement in the
British Waterways project. Bennett Associates worked on the ground-breaking
Millennium project as part of a team with Butterley Engineering and Tony Gee &
Partners.
Butterley Engineering were responsible for the overall design and
supply of the wheel with Tony Gee and partners having responsibility for the
design of the major structural elements and Bennetts being responsible for
several elements including:
- The lock gates and their associated structural and mechanical
design
- The gondola gates, their support and 'stability system' together
with the local gondola steel work.
- The main drive system
- The mechanism 'system' design and its interface with the civil
works
"The Falkirk Wheel is a remarkable feat of architectural and
engineering teamwork.
The project pulled together ideas and expertise from a wide range
of backgrounds to create a quite unique structure which is part building, part
machine and part sculpture." Explains MG Bennett & Associates managing director
Nick Cooper, adding; " behind the apparent simplicity of the Falkirk Wheel lie a
number of critical components where state of the art analysis and an in depth
understanding of engineering was required from our team.
The source of many of the innovative ideas was actually work we
had already carried out in other fields of mechanical engineering. The lock gate
seals for example used a proven solution from the sub sea oil industry, the
wheel and rail mounting of the gondolas was developed from work on dockside
cranes and the bearing support and mounting system used for the giant axle of
the Falkirk Wheel came from an in depth knowledge and experience of tunnelling
machinery and wind turbine design.
We are rightly proud of our achievements on this project and
decided that the best way to demonstrate our involvement was by producing the
scale model. 1-Off Engineering used our original engineering drawings of the
Falkirk Wheel, produced for Butterley Engineering, and scaled everything down to
a one fiftieth size. Thankfully the budget was scaled down by an even greater
degree but we think that the end result is just as impressive as the original.
It has already created a great deal of interest and is a great aid in showing
people just what we are capable of."
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