New Zenith 1500 Fully-automatic Block Production Line in South Russia

“Glavdorstroy” is a private company, located in Caucasus Mountains area, near the cities of Mineralnye Vody and Pyatigorsk, with headquarter in Lermontov city.

This young company originally specialized in road construction and asphalt production. Due to the increasing amount of roads construction, the demand for curbstone also grew. Moreover, the development in private house construction in this region also indicated that an increasing demand for high-quality concrete. Based on this situation, “Glavdorstroy” had built a new factory on their production base again, using Wiggert mixer to supply concrete to new Zenith 1500 Block Machine. Since early 2016 until now, “Glavdorstroy” had offered more than 20 kinds of different concrete blocks to clients. And the production capacity & block types will be doubled in this year.

In the early years after it was founded, “Glavdorstroy” specialized in asphalt production and road construction in the central region of Russia, also already expanded entire nation. In recent years, however, “Glavdorstroy” had shifted its focus to Stavropol and the Mineralnye Vody regions. After commissioning a modern asphalt facility, “Glavdorstroy” had became a leader in road construction. “From the beginning, we only focused on excellent equipment and quality products. This principle helped us immediately and made us have a foothold in the market.” says company founder, Mr. Rasmik Aramyan.

Massive road construction had lead to a high demand for curbstones & the most important point was quality. “ We originally purchased the curbstones from other factories. But we have to guarantee the quality of the road we constructed. The control system in our own concrete block making machine has made an important contribution to the quality of finished product,” said the head of new factory, Mr. Armen Aramyan, who is now the second generation of this family firm.

The Mineralnye Vody and Caucasus regions are always hot spring resorts since the Tsars, Soviet times until now. The mountainous areas are building convalescent centers and modern family residential district. The new buildings must conform to the rigorous requirement of architecture and landscape. “ we produce not only curbstones, but also other paving stones & landscape blocks. We want to make our beautiful country to become more beautiful with our products,” said the factory production manager, Mr. Sergei Lomachevski.

Without good aggregates, it is impossible to produce blocks with fine surface The mountain region had provided a great opportunity for this aggregate factory to produce a wide range of high quality blocks. Thanks to the mould design and good arregates, the concrete blocks and curbstones of “Glavdorstroy” are of high quality & long lifetime.

There are total 500 employees working at “Glavdorstroy”. Among them, thirty ones are involved in production and sales of paving stone. The factory worked 1.5 shifts per day, and transport uninterruptedly.

Zenith 1500 high performance machine

The decision to order Zenith 1500 single pallet machine was not made immediately by “Glavdorstroy”. Over the past three years, Mr. Rasmik Aramyan collected the information and visited many block machine manufactures.” In the early beginning, I only want to have a flexible production line without too much investment, but have high quality & performance,” the company founder recalled.

Based on the continuous growing of curbstones demand for road construction as mentioned above, the government also encouraged the investment, promised that many orders in the coming years. Then “Glavdorstroy” decided to go for big board block making machine. A flexible system with quick mould change turned to be a right decision.

In January 2015, the company decided to purchase Zenith 1500 machine finally, which had its premiere at the Zenith in-house exhibition in the autumn. Of 2014 Mr. Aramyan was convinced by the machine quality and performance at that time.

The newly Zenith 1500 machine is designed for producing a wide range of concrete products. The machine is able to produce both niche products and standard products in the spheres of horticulture and landscaping, such as paving stones, curbstones and masonry bricks.

When designing this machine, the Zenith engineers considered not only high quality & production, but also easy maintenance. By using screw joint, all wear parts can be replaced quickly. And the vibrating table, motor crossbeam and frame side parts adopt screw-joint design, which makes the machine can be flexibly adjusted according to customer’s site.

The standard pallet size of this machine is 1,400×1,100 mm. It also has other different dimension designs, size of 1400x800 up to 1400x1200 mm with different thicknesses.

UltraDynamik vibrating system

In conjunction with Siemens Company, Zenith had already developed the new UltraDynamik vibrating system, which can achieve good compaction on concrete products within short cycle time. The vibrators consist of 4×6 KW motors with certain power rating. Motor and inverter are in the motor housing. No additional cooling necessary. All the vibrations are working with pre- and main vibration. With additional motor bearing, this release the vibration drives and therefore increases the durability. Separation of vibration supports from vibration table can avoid interferences by undesired transfer of vibration to the drives. Separating the vibrator consoles from the vibrating table avoids interference to the drives from unwanted transmission of vibration. All of the vibration motors can be individually controlled.

The hydraulic system of Zenith 1500 is maintenance-friendly and precious with big tank volumes on the hydraulic station. All valves are located in a maintenance-friendly work height on a service station close to the block machine.

Feed boxes for base and face mix in quick-change design. Continuous monitoring & estimate of the feeding are possible.

This block-making machine is equipped with Siemens S7 1500 control and switch technology TIA, which can be controlled remotely via the internet. In this way, Zenith staff can solve the problem in shortest time.

The machine has a new control and diagnostic system, which fully supports the operator in running the machine and increases the production efficiency. Any situation that can leads to a complete halt of the system can be visible clearly on the control system. Zenith machine won’t be stopped without any fault indication.

Simple & Quick Mould-changing Device

All the moulds are automatically inserted and restrained. Extremely short mould changing times is possible with one employee.

Mould feeding box and mould are lifted by a mould beam. Proportional pressure adjustment of the mould restraint unit can be adjusted and programmed by operator. The mould is clamped to the vibrating table by an additional air actuator. The mould-changing carriage is of solid structure.

Fast and Smooth Commissioning

The new Zenith 1500 was mounted in a new hall with a view of the picturesque surrounding mountains. After the machine and the other related equipments arrive in Russia, they install the machine on the foundation, which “Glavdorstroy” had already prepared in advanced. The steel construction work was constructed quickly and efficiently. The two planetary mixers and the Zenith production line work stably & fast.

Looking back at the commissioning in the factory, Mr. Aramyan is very satisfied with the process:” In my view, the collaboration with Zenith company are very pleasant,. Any emerging problem can be solved immediately. The installation and commissioning only took three months, which is really fast.”

“The Zenith machine really fits our operator. After commissioning, we were able to produce high quality products immediately, and after a few cycles, it turned out to be more perfect,” said Sergei Lomachevski. “Ultimately, it is some small factors make us trust in Zenith 1500. The machine is state of the art. Compared with previous models, there are numerous modifications on this machine, which convinced me. The Zenith machine brings us many benefits. Even with some small orders, the quick mould change device makes everything easier. This production line had involved into our entire network. Thanks to Zenith’s adapter system, we can continue using our complete moulds.”” Mr. Lomachevski continues.”

For “Glavdorstroy” company, the first cooperation experience with Zenith is so positive that they are now considering ordering another two Zenith production lines in the near future.