As manufacturers and suppliers, the shop floor can get quite busy! We thought you might be interested in a roundup of the jobs leaving the factory plus a few product insights sprinkled with a few notes of what is happening at Ritherdon.
Let’s get the ball rolling and let me welcome you to the shop floor roundup.
More Storage in Assembly
Our aim is to keep more Ritherdon feeder pillars and cabinets stocked ready, unassembled and ready to paint to order – so we’ve added a new mezzanine floor to the Assembly for extra storage space. It’s looking better already with the brand new stairs put up this April.
Powder Coated Pillars and Cabinets
Speaking of painted pillars and cabinets, we’ve had a couple of different colours come out of the paint shop. We’ve had a request for a Cobalt Blue PS60, our 1250 wide Permanent Supply cabinet with independent bays and padlock shroud.
Also, another PS60 in Dark Grey for a permanent connection and an RB1000 for a temporary electrical connection painted red as per customer’s request. This RB1000, part of the RB cabinet range, is going to be installed in an Electricity Northwest DNO area and their requirement is to identify all temporary supplies by painting them red. Plus, there is no extra cost for painting the cabinet red as we’ve added red to our standard paint colours.
A batch of Large Enclosures
We had a good batch of our larger enclosures lined up awaiting their dedicated articulated truck to take them to their final destination. The enclosures will be housing the power supply for EV charging.
Dust Mask Checks
And for those of you, who enjoy knowing a bit more of what goes on behind the scenes here’s a bit of health and safety happenings. We do a lot of grinding in the factory, making sure all welds, joints, corners and surfaces of our products have a smooth finish.
Every few months, we check dusk masks that we use in grinding and other jobs. We make sure they fit correctly and blow something smelly to make sure they are working correctly.
Return to Ritherdon
By the way, did we mention Return to Ritherdon? Return to Ritherdon is a special Arts Council project granted to local Manchester Artist Nicola Ellis. As some of you will know, last year we had the opportunity to participate in Art in Manufacturing Season 2, a special project sponsored by Arts Council England and part of the National Festival of Making that took place in neighbouring town Blackburn. Last year, we worked with Ellis to make her installation for the Festival.
So once again, we get the opportunity to host an artist residency on the shop floor where Nicola will be working with us for 55 days over an 18 month period. Nicola will be creating several sculptures as a result of the residency. She’ll start off on the shop floor gathering inspiration and learning a bit more of what we do at Ritherdon; a more in-depth look into all the manufacturing, design processes and even the business side of things.
Whilst the artist residency takes place we get to enjoy seeing manufacturing through an artist’s perspective.
