In one of my recent posts “Do we really need another UHPC Guideline?” I mention that Hi-Con has received an ETA (European Technical Assessment) and we are now ready to add a CE-marking to our balcony elements. We are still in the process of getting the final approvals from the certification body (Dancert) so a blog entry describing the process is a bit premature. At a later date, however, I intend to explain a little more about what this means (EAD, ETA, CE), why we decided to do this – and how the process has been.
We started the process in the spring of 2014, so we have had a few surprises along the way (one of the surprises being how long it has taken). While we already had quite an extensive documentation, we had to update some of our tests – and we had to make a few changes in our production to meet the requirements of Dancert. As a teaser to my later blog entry – and to show that a small specification of requirements can have a large effect – I will present just one of these changes: the installation of two fiber dispensers.
From the start of Hi-Con in 2001 and up to 2018 we have handled the fibres manually. For our QC we counted the bags that were introduced in the mixer – and we made sure that the content was at least equal to the mix recipe. If the mix required 117 kg of fibres, we would add 120 in order to use only full bags. We have been fine with this for many years – and as we use up to 400 tons of fibres per year the guys in charge of mixing have had no need for a fitness membership. But the requirement from Dancert was that everything was visible on the mixing report – the exact amounts as well as alarm settings for all our checking requirements (minimum microsilica/cement ratio, minimum binder content, minimum fibre index etc.). There are of course several ways to handle this, but the way we decided to go was to finally invest in a fibre dispensing system (something we had talked about for years). And to make up for waiting so long we invested in two dispensers as we mainly use two types of fibres. I have included a few pictures as well as a video of the fibre dispensing system.
The fibre dispensers are one of the more visible results from the process we have been through, but we have certainly been challenged and we have learned a lot along the way. I will – as mentioned – try to go in more detail with this later, but for now the pictures and video will have to suffice as an appetizer 🙂 .
Bendt Kjær Aarup
R&D Manager
bka@hi-con.dk
Read about Bendt’s 30 years of experience with CRC right here
That looks very good Bendt, much faster than I thought. Will not only be easier for the guys but it will also save some kg fibres while you have the possibility to use large package for the fibres.
Thank you Peter, the guys mixing are very pleased with the new system. And I worked out the numbers for our CEO on how much we save each day by not having to add full bags, but being able to add the exact amount required. That certainly helped in getting the investment approved 🙂