Over roughly two years, Mobile Automation moved a Victorian steel processor's plant into a new factory and brought it back into production — a slitting line, a cut-to-length line and a re-coiler, plus the factory services around them. The work ran across ten separate job numbers and around 400 individual site attendances, delivered by the same crew.
The challenge
Relocating a steel processing plant is not one job. Heavy coil-handling machinery has to be positioned to fine tolerances, grouted and bolted down, then re-powered, re-wired, re-guarded and re-commissioned — while the business still has orders to fill. Every line has its own electrical scope, its own mechanical scope, and its own list of things that only reveal themselves once it runs under load.
It also needed everything a working factory needs beyond the machines: lighting, compressed air, power to the maintenance area, data cabling and a comms room.
What the program covered
Slitting line
- Electrical installation — cable tray, conduit, cabling, control cabinet fit-off, GPOs at the slitting head, laser pointers aligned on the EMG
- Mechanical installation — machine bases grouted and shimmed, base and machine bolts tensioned and marked, rails ground flat and polished, rail car stops re-welded to position
- Sensor bracketry fabricated, painted and fitted throughout; pit safety frame assembled; safety gates and fencing installed
Cut-to-length line
- Electrical installation — cable tray and covers, cabling, scales controller tray, security and comms cabinet power
- Mechanical installation — coil racking positioned and fixed, inspection platform fabricated for the rotary shear, transducers fitted to the levelling machine, hydraulic cylinder mounting system manufactured and chem-set into the pit
- Commissioning support through the cassette-carriage teething faults on the new line
Re-coiler relocation
- Machine disconnected, relocated from the previous site and re-installed
- Steel conduit bent and mounted, cables pulled, main operating control panel fitted off
- PLC recovered, battery replaced and reinstalled; safety circuit fault traced and redundant pressure pads removed; brake pressure fault diagnosed back to the control signal rather than the pneumatics
Factory fit-out and services
- Production camera system — brackets fabricated, cameras mounted on the slitting line, Cat6 run under floor plates and through tray into the existing NVR, with operator monitors at the main desk and the scrap baller
- 250W floodlighting around the slitter and high-bay lighting across the slitter and cut-to-length lines
- Air compressor and dryer supplies, and power to the maintenance shed
- Data cabling, comms hub corrections and a satellite dish installed on the roof
- Upender safety panel programmed, commissioned and tested; roller door faults resolved
- As-built CAD drawings produced for the site
Alignment is the part nobody sees
Coil-handling machinery has to be level and true or it marks product and wears itself out. Our fitters aligned the lines using a dumpy level and theodolite, ground high spots out of the grout where the carts run, polished the rails, and then went back and tensioned and paint-marked every base fastener so the next person can see at a glance whether anything has moved.
From installation into production support
The largest single job in the program was not an installation — it was the production support that followed. Once the lines were running, the same crew stayed on for breakdown attendance, HMI improvements, sensor adjustment, light-curtain diagnosis and lighting repairs.
That ongoing work is documented separately in steel-line controls, safety and reliability upgrades. It is the same plant and the same team — the relocation is simply where the relationship started.
The results
- Two production lines and a re-coiler relocated, installed and commissioned in a new factory
- Electrical, mechanical, controls, safety and factory services delivered by one contractor — no interface gaps between trades
- Machinery aligned and fastened to a documented standard, with fasteners marked for future inspection
- Camera, lighting, compressed air, data and comms infrastructure installed alongside the production plant
- A crew that knew the plant from day one, still supporting it through production