Governor Services Australia (GSA) recently set up a high-precision grinding and honing room at its facility in Eagle Farm, just outside Brisbane, boosting its capabilities with the investment in a Suprema CNC universal cylindrical grinding machine from Jones & Shipman.
Founded in 1981, GSA is the largest independent Governor service facility in the Australasian region, specialising in Woodward, Diesel Kiki, Zexel and Heinzmann governing equipment. Boasting a workforce with more than 120 years of collective experience in the design, manufacture, service and repair of governing equipment, the team at GSA is considered specialist and leader in Governor technology for the South-East Asian region.
The company services a range of valued customers in the power-generation, sugar milling, mining, oil & gas, and transport industries, both throughout Australia and internationally. With an advanced, well-equipped workshop, freely available spare parts and a team of enthusiastic, proficient staff, GSA is capable of providing efficient and high-quality service and repairs for all forms of governing equipment. GSA’s workshop facilities include a full range of quality machine tools and a large stock-holding of Australian-made spare parts, which enables it to ensure a high level of service.
GSA’s 3,600sqm facility has been designed and equipped with an emphasis above all on quality. Its sizeable workshop and its team of eight full-time mechanical and electronic governor technicians mean that the company is comfortably equipped to manage any number of simultaneous governor repairs should the need arise. The Eagle Farm facility is situated close to road and air transport links, which helps the company to deliver high levels of customer support given that timing is vital for today’s manufacturing businesses.
The highly competitive manufacturing environment also means GSA’s customers routinely demand high levels of compliance. Consequently, it is important for the company to continually invest in high quality and the highest specifications, in terms of machine tools and personnel. To meet the expectations of its customers and to remain competitive in an increasingly demanding marketplace, GSA is always looking for new ways to improve its services and processes.
A complete machine shop
Most recently GSA installed a Jones & Shipman Suprema CNC universal cylindrical grinding machine. The new Jones & Shipman machine has given the company a complete quality precision machine shop by adding grinding and honing to its capabilities.
With a working range of 300mm diameter by 1,000mm grinding length, the Suprema can cover O/D-I/D and face grinding, and is ideal for finish-grinding components that involve demanding tolerances. The Suprema features a Self-Teach Easy Touchscreen control that also gives GSA the option of tool-room work, small-batch and high-volume production cylindrical and internal grinding. The machine also has a sizing gauge fitted.
According to GSA, the addition of the Suprema machine from Jones & Shipman has enhanced its capability to exceed its customers’ demands and meet compliance guidelines. For GSA, the average service turnaround is usually between five and ten working days. During an emergency breakdown, where a defective governor has the potential to cause substantial downtime and economic losses, the new Suprema machine will provide a quicker turnaround because grinding and honing work can now be done in-house. GSA intends to offer its precision grinding and honing service to any customer if the parts can fit the work range of the machine.
Jones & Shipman is part of Hardinge Grinding Group, which also includes L Kellenberger & Co. Both of these companies are over 115 years old and have been active in all areas of high-precision and high-quality grinding systems, such as cylindrical, surface and creepfeed grinding. GSA’s staff received comprehensive training in all aspects of the new Suprema machine from the Jones & Shipman customer application & services engineer. This was arranged by Thornhill Machine Tools, the Australian agent for Jones & Shipman as well as for Kellbenerger.
sales@thornhill.com.au