Fume Extraction System Improves Environment Environment at Badge Maker

A specially designed and built fume extraction system from Flextraction Ltd, is to-day helping RETrade Ltd, one of the UK’s leading manufacturers of bespoke badges, improve the working environment for its employees.

RETrade Ltd based in Hinckley, Leicestershire is the manufacturing arm of Recognition Express Ltd, who operate franchises in corporate recognition and promotional products. Recognition Express was established in 1979 and now has over 45 franchisees in the UK and Europe, in a growing market worth in excess of £3 billion per annum. RETrade manufactures a wide range of traditional printed badges and engraved styles to full-colour digital badges with complex graphics. The range is almost endless and includes everything from personalised name badges; ID cards; button and embroidered badges; pins and enamel badges; to conference and temporary badges for hotel and restaurant chains, as well as many well known industrial and commercial organisations.

Paul Mitchell, Operations Director at RETrade explains what was required from Flextraction: “A few years back, the company was given a project to produce a name badge with a durable wipe clean surface and enhanced appearance and we came up with a process, now called doming which is putting a self levelling epoxy resin over the badge to protect it. The process had existed but nobody had put it on a name badge before. Health and Safety regulations state that there are some associated risks when working with epoxy resins. We only use small amounts on each badge but produce a lot of badges, so we put in this extraction system to comply with the latest regulations. We approached Flextraction after finding them on the internet, they are fairly local and the only criteria we gave them was that the system had to be bench mounted. They came in, had a look at what we do, did some calculations and came up with a suggestion as to what we needed and then they put the system in. They responded very well to our initial enquiry and came up with a good solution. So all in all we are pleased with the installation.”

The Flextraction fume extraction system is designed and built round 5 different sized extraction cabinets, which are designed to contain and capture of all fumes, whilst still allowing operator access. 3 cabinets each measuring 500mm x 500mm x 1,200mm are used for applying self levelling epoxy resin to each badge, whilst 2 cabinets each 500mm x 500mm x 710mm are used to store and cure the resin on the badges, which give off fumes until hardened a few hours later. PVC-371 lightweight, flexible and compressible hosing with an operating temperature range of approximately -10°c to +110°C, links each cabinet to the ducting system, designed and proportioned to provide a good conveying velocity throughout its length. All fumes are extracted to outside the building using a floor mounted CB-1428 single phase centrifugal, single inlet fan with multi forward facing blades and running at 1,300 r/min.

Lee Darton, General Manager (Products) at Flextraction said: “We design and build a multitude of systems for a wide variety of applications and this particular application shows just how well the internet can operate in finding new business. In this application their skilled operators apply the epoxy resin to very small areas, so it is reasonably intricate work. We had to come up with a solution that took away the fumes, at the same time allowing their operators working access and this has been achieved.”