Sheard Packaging saves £34,000 in three months with ifm leak detector

Using an SDL100 compressed air leak detector from ifm electronic as part of a simple inspection routine that takes just a few minutes each day, Sheard Packaging, the UK’s leading independent corrugated solutions provider, has saved over £34,000 in just three months. The company confidently expects to make further savings in the future and to continue improving the environmental performance of its operations by eliminating compressed air leakage.

At its site in Halifax, Sheard Packaging operates twelve large machines that convert corrugated cardboard into packaging for a wide range of applications. All of these machines make extensive use of compressed air, and Sheard had for some time been concerned about the possibility of leakage. Since compressed air is an expensive commodity, leakage is costly, and as compressors consume energy unnecessarily to supply the leakage, it also has an environmental impact.

To address this problem, Sheard looked at portable devices that detect leaks by monitoring the ultrasonic sound they produce. Most of these, however, are general purpose instruments offering many functions not needed by Sheard and, as a result, are very costly. After mentioning the problem to ifm, however, Sheard was introduced to the SDL100, a compact and highly competitively priced device designed specifically for detecting compressed air leaks.

The SDL100 is a handheld device with a shape similar to that of a gun. It has a colour screen at the rear; at the front is an array of ultrasonic microphones together with an optical camera. In use, the SDL100 is simply pointed at the equipment that is being checked for leaks; the screen shows an image of the equipment with potential leakage points highlighted. The presence of a leak can typically be detected at a distance of up to 15 metres, and the precise location can be determined by moving closer. Very detailed images can be captured at distances as close as 10 cm. The SDL100 also logs information about the rate of leakage, which can be used to assess its financial and environmental impact.

An initial trial with an SDL100 borrowed from ifm quickly delivered promising results, and, based on these results, the engineering team at Sheard developed a business case for purchasing the device. This suggested that, over a full year, savings would be of the order of £30,000. This was sufficiently impressive to justify proceeding with the purchase, and, in practice, the estimated annual savings were exceeded within a few months.

Sheard analyses data collected by the SDL100 using software that ifm provides with the device. This automatically calculates the cost of the leakage and its environmental impact. These insights make it possible to prioritise repairs so that, for example, major leaks are dealt with immediately while less serious problems can be scheduled for correction during times when the associated machine is not in operation. The ifm software is used alongside Sheard’s Agility asset management system to facilitate the ordering of replacement parts needed to correct leaks. More extensive integration is planned for the near future.