Swiss know-how on the road

Hi there, my name is Christian Henke. I've been working for Ferrum as a service technician in the Centrifuge Division since 2001. I spent 65 days on duty abroad last year, for example. That's normal for a service technician employed by a company which sells 90 percent of its machines overseas! :-) I was in Sweden, Spain, Italy and also spent 14 days in China. Here's my photo diary from the Middle Kingdom!

Zurich - Beijing - Jinan - Heze. After 20 hours spent traveling, on the plane, waiting in airport lounges and, finally, in the car, I arrive in Heze. It's one of those typical Chinese "small cities" which nobody's ever heard of, but which boasts 10 million inhabitants. In China, the city is famous for its cultivation of peonies, China's national plant. My view from the hotel room isn't as floral: Smog.

The next morning, my driver picks me up from the hotel and takes me to our customer's plant. The Heze Ruiying Pharmaceutical Group employs a workforce of 1,500 and manufactures so-called APIs (Active Pharmaceutical Intermediates), i.e. active agents and intermediate products for the pharmaceutical industry. Output: 867 tons a year.

Ferrum machines are in use the world over. An important market for centrifuges is China, which currently houses around 350 Ferrum centrifuges, two of these on our customer's site in Heze: HPZ scraper centrifuges with a basket diameter of 1.25 meters and a depth of 60 centimeters. It would now appear that, on one of the centrifuges, the bearing's lip seal is leaking, with the result that wash liquid is seeping into the bearing.

After completing my error analysis, I disassemble the bearing with a team of assistants. It is clear that labor is cheap in China. In any case, I was continually surrounded by ten helpers, although I was able to perform many of the repairs myself. However, perhaps it wasn't so much about helping as about seeing what the far-famed Swiss engineering was all about! :-)

None of my hosts can speak a word of English. Fortunately, I receive support from our Ferrum branch in Kunshan, near Shanghai. Service technician Michael Wang also helps out as a translator and consultant. In the picture, he's the one wearing the protective shoes.

The problem reveals itself when I take a look at the hydraulic tank, complete with pump: The defective lip seal has allowed solvent to penetrate the hydraulic tank. This leads to rust.

In order to repair the lip seal, it first has to be disassembled. This requires special tools made by Ferrum. Fortunately, the customer purchased these along with the machine. The steel ring is screwed onto the lip seal, which is extracted from the bearing housing millimeter by millimeter.

Special tools Made in China. Chinese are unbelievably ingenious when it comes to spontaneous problem-solving. We need a hammer, but none is available? Just weld an iron pipe and a large threaded bolt together and voilà - there's your hammer.

The damage becomes visible during the disassembly process. The actual task of the lip seal is to prevent oil from the bearing leaking into the product chamber, or substances from the chamber penetrating the bearing during the centrifuge's operation. In this case, the faulty lip seal has allowed solvent to penetrate the seal, which is now causing the bearing housing to corrode.

I've been looking forward to this since my last visit to Heze in 2014: an evening meal with the customer. In China, the food's fantastic - so many new tastes! Vegetables I've never laid eyes on before, spices I've never tried, fish, meat, starfish, sea urchins, everything ... The customer is kind enough to pick up the tab. By the way, he's also the one to decide when (and how often) we drink schnapps together.

I'm the tallest - and especially in China. Standing at 2.04 meters, I'm a tall man, and exactly 39 centimeters taller than the average Chinese. It follows that there are now loads of selfies of me and Chinese on Chinese cellphones. But back to the grind - we're almost done. Here, you can see me and an assistant inserting the repaired shaft with the two new bearings into the bearing housing. Afterwards, all we had to do was assemble the lip seal.

Heze by night. Normally, I spent the evenings in the hotel. But tonight is Saturday, and I decide to go out. It's adventure pure - no one understands me, I understand nobody either, and, to top it all off, I can't read a thing. In my 14 days in Heze I've seen just one European - looking at me in the mirror each morning.

A day off at last! What's the plan? The customer suggests a trip to the Millennium City Park in Kaifeng. The drive there is an experience in itself. People overtake right and left, indicating is pointless, and the horn is more important than the steering wheel. After three hours spent sitting in traffic, we reach the theme park and embark on a journey back in time - 1,000 years back, to be precise - to the China of the Song Dynasty.

One thing which is extremely popular in China: Cockfighting. The clamor is immense, the tempers boiling over - not because of the animal cruelty, but due to the many bets going the rounds. The entire affair would be incompatible with the Swiss animal welfare ethic.

The completely repaied seal is installed in the stator - with new bearings, sealing lips, membranes and spacer discs. It's
now sealing again flawlessly.

"Mission accomplished" - two Ferrum colleagues from China have come along too: Mechanic Li Lipeng and salesman William Wang. We celebrate the successful recommissioning of the clean room, into which the centrifuge is integrated as a through-the-wall construction.