Inside the machine shop at Paget

People hear "machine shop" and picture a lathe and a mill in a tin shed. Ours is a bit different. ABC Heavy Engineering runs the machine shop at Paget, and it is built to handle the components that smaller shops simply cannot fit through the door.

The building takes loads up to 10 metres wide, 10 metres high and 35 metres long. High-clearance factory cranes give 12 metres of under-hook height and a dual-lift capability of 150 tonnes, so a single workpiece weighing as much as a loaded haul truck can be picked up and set on a machine.

That capacity is what lets us machine dragline gear cases, slew bearing rings, crusher components and rope drums that would otherwise have to travel south.

The floor is set up around a handful of large CNC machines, each chosen for a different kind of work:

• CNC floor borer, 13 metres of travel and a 6 metre column, for workpieces up to 150 tonnes.
• CNC vertical borer, 5 metre diameter capacity for large rings and bowls.
• CNC twin-post vertical borer, 3.5 metre diameter, for flanged and bored components.
• CNC lathes, turning components weighing over 40 tonnes.
• CNC gear cutter, internal and external gears cut to 5.5 metres in diameter.

Around those sit long-bed machines, mills, planers, machining centres, lathes and radial-arm drills to cover everything in between.

Big machines are only half the job. Every component that goes through the shop is measured and recorded, and detailed QA packages can be provided with all work completed. When a customer gets a part back, they get the paperwork that proves it was made right.

That combination, the size to take the work on, the precision to finish it, and the documentation to back it, is why operators across the Bowen Basin send their heaviest components to Paget.

Want to know if we can machine your component? Talk to our team or call 07 4952 3444.