SMM Sonderbau commissions a new CBS 100 SL Elba concrete mixing plant
The Müller construction company, headquartered at Weiding near Cham in Germany’s Upper Palatinate region is renowned far beyond the borders of their region for their excellence in general construction and civil engineering work as well as turnkey projects. The Müller family that owns the firm has also set up a specialist company – SMM Sonderbau – a prefabrication plant devoted entirely to the manufacture of concrete and brick-concrete products. The owners wanted to ensure a faster and more individual supply of fresh concrete for their customers and their own prefabrication plant in the future. To achieve this, they decided to purchase a stationary CBS 110 SL Elba concrete mixing plant from Ammann.
Michael Müller is joint CEO of the prefabrication enterprise (SMM Sonderbau Fertigteilwerk GmbH) alongside his father, Helmut Müller. Michael saw the investment in an Ammann concrete mixing plant as the logical next step in the company’s development: “Our company specialises in standard and high-grade concrete varieties, and we mainly produce beam systems, bunker silage pads, lintel systems and special concrete components, double walls, precast floor/ceiling slabs and thermal (sandwich) wall panels. These products are used in garden construction and landscaping work, for example, and also in large commercial and industrial buildings. Now we simply produce our own fresh concrete for our prefabrication plant – which makes us independent of suppliers. Self-collectors can also buy their concrete fresh from our plant. This gives us a concrete turnover volume that we can handle comfortably with the new mixing plant.”
Modular galvanised design ensures robustness and durability
Another decisive argument in favour of this Ammann feeder plant was its exceptionally robust, galvanized modular design. The ‘construction kit’ principle allows customers to equip their plant with additional specialised features. For example, the Ammann CBS 110 SL Elba has a frequency-controlled mixer drive that positively impacts mix qualities and concrete varieties. The single-shaft mixer used in the plant for this purpose has proven to be exceptionally durable and robust in practice; furthermore, the mixer ensures that mix qualities for each concrete variety conform to recognised industry-wide standards.
The shaft is the main wearing part in the mixer. To ensure a significantly longer service lifetime for this component, Ammann Elba has developed its Elba Wear Protection (EWP) for this specific purpose. For instance, the EWP prevents liquid concrete escaping from worn gaskets, which could damage the bearings.
Another benefit: the frequency controlled drive on the CEM 2250 S Elba mixer ensures that current peaks are prevented on plant start-up – this guarantees a longer lifetime for the entire plant. This also has a positive side-effect: the energy supplier uses the current peaks to calculate the consumption. Because they are avoided in this case, the Ammann CBS 110 SL Elba also operates more cost-effectively and efficiently than other concrete mixing plants.
Specifications to customers’ requirements
Helmut and Michael Müller worked with Ammann to equip their Ammann CBS 110 SL Elba with additional special features. It was fitted with an integrated high-pressure mixer cleaning system and two swivelling hoppers with separate control: one of the hoppers ensures safe and clean loading of fresh concrete for self-collectors, while the other contains cleaning water and dirty water. This is needed for the daily cleaning by the integrated high-pressure cleaning system. Generously dimensioned platforms provide easy access to the individual modules, so thorough cleaning and maintenance is ensured with safety and convenience. These features maintain the plant’s performance in terms of concrete quantity and quality. There are also benefits for the staff: because the plant is in perfect condition, workplace safety is guaranteed and the mixing engineer needs less time to carry out his work.
Top-quality special concrete varieties with specific characteristics
As well as the mixer’s frequency controlled drive, the right additives play a key part in the production of numerous special concrete varieties such as SCC (self-compacted concrete) and UHPC (ultra-high performance concrete). A twin-chamber scale is used to ensure the exact recipe for each quality class. This guarantees careful separation of the mixes and prevents reactions between the liquid concrete additives that are mixed with the grains and the cement before they are fed into the mixer. Both the owner and his staff were also impressed by the as1 plant control unit, as Michael Müller notes: “This extremely advanced control is user-friendly and easy to learn: our employees who work on the plant are highly appreciative of these outstanding assets.”
A complete package that delivers convincing performance and efficiency
For entrepreneur Michael Müller, all these individual factors and plant functions add up to a convincing complete solution for his company: “Both the Ammann Elba brand and the single-shaft mixer enjoy an excellent reputation in our industry. Especially when it comes to producing special varieties such as SCC (self-compacted concrete) and UHPC (ultra-high performance concrete), the combination of an Ammann plant with the frequency-controlled mixer drive is working extremely powerful – and that was precisely the kind of plant we needed. Ammann offered us excellent and fair advisory support from the planning and purchase phases through to integration into our local site situation. Based on overall performance, I would always recommend an Ammann Elba concrete mixing plant to others.”
