The Challenge
Midwest Railcar Repair, Inc. (Brandon, South Dakota) has been servicing the railroad industry for nearly half a century. Pride and workmanship are the foundation of the company. By performing all railcar repairs and maintenance in-house, they are able to get high quality jobs done quickly.
Being a one-stop shop for railcars requires a large facility with a variety of equipment and machinery being used at the same time. Welding, grinding, and plasma cutting are processes constantly in use at the facility.
Maintaining a clean working environment for the employees and the work being produced has always been top priority. To prevent dust or fumes from being an issue, company president David Smook started researching online for a solution. The large size of the railcars and facility made the search c challenging. A variety of dust collection offerings were available, from horizontal style dust collectors to numerous small collectors being placed from the ceilings throughout the facility. These options involved their own maintenance and upkeep issues.
The Solution
After David Smook contacted Camfil Farr APC via an Internet search, the company’s manufacturer’s representative Glacier Technology set up an onsite meeting. After reviewing the processes, facility and other factors, the team recommended a Camfil Farr APC Gold Series® GS72 cartridge dust and fume collector for the job.
Installed in July 2011, the collector contains 72 vertically-mounted high efficiency filter cartridges and is designed to handle 100,000 CFM airflow. The dirty air from the various processes travels through large ducting to the dust collector located outside. An added bonus of this design is that the clean air can be distributed back into the plant during the winter months to help reduce heating and energy costs.
Locating the GS72 collector outside has saved valuable interior space, and the use of a single centralized system has made preventive maintenance simple and efficient. As Smook comments, “The Gold Series GS72 is large and in charge.”
