The Challenge

Like a lot of managers these days, Randy Weekley is faced with the Herculean job of doing more with less. More customer satisfaction, more revenue, and lower costs are the demands. Keeping York’s customers’ tubes clean is an important yet time consuming part of their service business. He is constantly looking for an edge to gain more efficiency on the job.

Although using tube cleaning units with an automatic feed system is desirable, he and his customers are concerned that speeds faster than 3’ per second will jeopardize the quality of the job. After all, the reason that tubes are being cleaned is to improve heat transfer efficiency and reduce energy costs. In looking for cost reductions, he discovered that jobs were taking longer than expected and more costly because of problems with the cleaner.

He found that:
•Too much time is spent in setup and laying out and arranging the cable so it would feed without twisting and kinking.
•Too much downtime to untwist or replace broken cables.
•He is paying for too many broken cables each season.
•Operators are tied up in non-value added maintenance time working on and fixing temperamental feeding systems, unjamming feed guns, electronics that keep shorting out, etc. He estimates that these repairs typically cost 4 hours per job!

The Solution

Randy’s technicians used Elliott’s new Cableless Tube Cleaning product called the Die-Hard™. They immediately appreciated its key features:
• Automatic feeding unit: Roughly the same automatic feeding speed as his older unit.
• No cable! The cleaning brush gets its power from water pressure, not a spinning cable.
• Rugged engineering and construction for higher uptime and lower repair costs.

They found that they were no longer frustrated with fussing with the cable and re-positioning it to avoid kinks and breaks. The visibility of the return of the brush through the clear nozzle and the quick stopping action virtually eliminated all gun jams. They were surprised to find out that they could clean between 180 to 200 tubes per hour.

The operators were pleased to find out that they stayed dry with the Die-Hard™ unit as the water is channeled away from the operator. There is no longer a need for water protection gear. Extra time to get in and out of wetsuits and boots is no longer necessary.

York operator Bobby Brown said it all: “Anyone that has ever used a GoodwayTM Speed Feed unit is going to love the Elliott Die-Hard.”

The Results

Randy and his team are well on their way with the Die-Hard™. Productivity is up by about 50% and about $4,000 a year is saved in consumable costs. Every operator has commented that they definitely prefer the new units. An 8-month payback justified York’s purchase of two Die-Hard™ units.