Continuing on with the product development theme, and referring back to last month's newsletter and the phrase “Necessity is the Mother of Invention”, here is another story of how one of our pumps came to be developed.
Sometime in early 1990 a customer contacted Hydra-Tech looking for a pump to keep dust down on roads that lead in and out of orchards. During dry spells dust would be blown around from vehicle traffic on the dirt roads. The dust would then cover the fruit trees and cause problems. They had a truck with a boom that could extend out 40 feet and wanted to suspend the pump into an irrigation canal that ran alongside the road. They had hydraulics on the truck already, so they could use some of the existing hydraulic power to drive the pump. The pump needed to supply 200 GPM at 100 PSI so they could use a fire nozzle to spray water on the roads as they drove along. Also, the pump could not weigh more than 45 lbs.
Hydra-Tech Pumps had already developed the S3CHL pump (see the last blog post “We Listen Part 1”) but it weighed too much, was more powerful than they needed and required more hydraulic power than was available. The S3CML became a variation that has an aluminum body and requires less hydraulic power to drive it. It was a win/win for the customer and Hydra-Tech Pumps since this pump is now used in many other applications including aviation forest fire fighting (many portable fire fighting applications), barge and cargo ship dewatering, deep well dewatering, tank stripping, irrigation, piling and dock jetting and other high head applications.
The S3CML is available in aluminum and only needs a maximum hydraulic flow of 16 GPM at 3500 PSI for full performance. But like the CHL, what performance you will get! This pump will deliver 460 gallons per minute with no head, but will still deliver 50 GPM @ 380’ of head! Again, just like the CHL, that is a lot of capability from a small pump.
“It pays to listen” and we hear you. Part of our job is to solve problems for customers. Sometimes the solution lies with a combination of existing products, sometimes the solution involves a referral to someone else’s product, and sometimes the solution needs to be developed. Do you have any challenging applications that we can help you solve?
