Peglers Tap into Rapid Manufacturing Technology

The manufacture of advanced plumbing, heating and engineering products has been the prime activity of Pegler Ltd., Doncaster, for over 100 years. Their excellent reputation has been earned through a total dedication to quality, innovation and customer service that has been the hallmark of Pegler since the company was established in 1899.

This successful recipe has produced Pegler’s current product portfolio that continues to go from strength to strength with product development playing a vital role in company strategy and reflecting the market’s changing needs.

In line with this, on 1st January, 2007, Pegler joined forces with its sister company, Yorkshire Fittings, to face the market as a joint sales and marketing function under the banner Pegler Yorkshire.

With the ever-changing market for new designs also comes the need to meet increased legislation from a ‘Health and Safety’ viewpoint. This imposes additional requirements on the product performance with the response to change essential to anticipate and meet new directives.

It was from this background and a proven relationship with CT that, when Peglers looked into their new product development, advantage was taken of using the Rapid Manufacturing processes available at CT.

From a past history of safety issues from increased hot water temperatures, Government directives were put forward to introduce the capability of regulating the outlet water temperatures for domestic taps. This relatively simple request has required a major step forward in the technology on tap manufacture to introduce new designs with built in thermostats to control outlet temperatures.

To ensure designs are correct and the product performance is achieved, initial low volume prototype part manufacture was required before the manufacture of the expensive and time consuming tool manufacture for high volume parts.

From discussions between Peglers and CT’s Rapid Manufacturing team, coupled with the availability of new ‘Patternless®’ mould and core manufacturing techniques at CT, a new product design was developed. The required cores and mould components were produced using a layer building process which provided a complete assembly ready for use in the foundry to produce a cast unit for machining and testing.

Paul Cooke, Engineering Manager, continues with his support for the Rapid Manufacturing developments at CT where prototype product manufacture using Rapid Manufacturing has maintained our pressure on new product development and enabled us to respond to changes in the product legislation and market place.

With our new expansions to include Yorkshire Fittings, the demand for further new products can only continue with our increased market penetration and our ability to respond to the market demand is essential. We will seek continued help from CT as we look to capitalise further on their range of services as we take our business forward in the future.