Hydraulic cylinders



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ISO 9002 Certificate

FACTORY
Pedro Roquet built a new factory in 2000 with the intention of expanding hydraulic cylinder production capacity to over 100,000 cylinders per year by 2004. This factory started production in September 2000, releasing capacity in the main plant (Tona) to increase production of valves, power packs and gate operators.

The factory trades as DINACIL, S.L. and is a member of the Pedro Roquet group of companies (other group companies include Tekor - gear pumps, Hy-Dom - gate operators and Fundiciones de Roda - castings).

DINACIL was built on a 10,000 sq. metre (100,000 sq. ft.) site in Centelles (50 km / 30 miles north of Barcelona) with an initial covered building area of 3,500 sq. metres (35,000 sq. ft.). In fact demand for hydraulic cylinders has been so high that the covered area was increased to 5,000 sq. metres in June 2002 and to 7,000 sq. metres in February 2003. Production in 2002 exceeded the originally planned figure for 2004. Capacity is being increased to 350,000 p.a. by late 2003.

The new factory is highly automated with the very latest machine tools and robotic systems for component transfer, welding, ultrasonic cleaning, assembly, testing, painting etc.

DESIGN & DEVELOPMENT
Our design and development departments work closely with customers to develop the most suitable designs for specific applications. Our development department is rather large for a company of this size and continuously conducts fatigue and life tests to customer specifications, as well as running parallel "pure" development projects to improve cylinder design and manufacturing systems.

PRODUCTS
Medium to large quantities of welded cylinders up to 3 m (10 ft.) stroke, 125 mm (5 in.) bore.

PHILOSOPHY
We realize that the total hydraulic cylinder market is vast. We do not intend to be the largest, nor the most economical supplier. Our target markets are those volume mobile applications that need good cylinders at reasonable prices. We have carried out extensive testing on different cylinder construction methods used and, for instance, the different approaches to the apparently simple task of finishing the I/D of a cylinder tube have a dramatic effect on cylinder life (over 20:1) - we use what we believe to be the optimum finishing technique - we hone all our tubes after welding port-bosses.

APPLICATIONS
We supply new volume applications for specific American, European and Asian OEMs. The main applications are construction machinery (back-hoes, dumpers, loaders, small excavators), mechanical handling (fork-lifts) and agricultural machinery (tractors). We would welcome enquiries for quantities in the range 1000-20,000 hydraulic cylinders per year, with minimum batches of 200-1000. roquet@pedro-roquet.com

Photos of the factory
	The factory - outside.
	The factory - part of machining area.
	Large lathes with robot transfer of cylinder tubes and rods (up to 200kg per part).
	Downloading programme from central computer to one of the large lathes.
	One of a group of small lathes for machining pistons, bosses, small cylinder rods etc.
	One of a group of machining centres useed to make rear covers, rod-ends etc.
	One of the welding robots - used to weld port bosses to tubes etc.
	Control panel of one of the tube honing machines.
	The line of cleaning baths with robot transfer used to clean cylinder tubes after welding of ports and honing - prior to welding rear covers. Cleaning baths include water + detergent used to remove honing fluid, followed by hot solvent + ultrasonic cleaning.
	Paint line.
	Dock-leveller cylinders leaving paint line.
	Rods for fork-lift steering application.

Old photos