Industrial Engineering Services in Peterborough
Motor rewinds, gearbox and pump repair, drum motors and new drives from our Saracen Business Park workshop.
When a motor, gearbox or pump fails, you need someone close enough to get to it and experienced enough to tell you honestly whether it is worth repairing. Our Peterborough workshop on Saracen Business Park does both, and supplies the new equipment when a repair is not the right answer.
We have been in electro-mechanical engineering for close to 80 years. Peterborough is our southern base, covering Cambridgeshire, south Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire and out into East Anglia, with our Grantham workshop taking the northern half of that area.
The Peterborough workshop
Saracen Business Park sits off Newark Road on the eastern side of the city, minutes from the A15 with straightforward access to the A47 and A1. If your site is in Fengate, Eastern Industry, Orton Southgate or out towards Whittlesey, we are a short drive rather than a courier job.
Being close by changes what we can tell you. An engineer who has seen the failed unit still bolted to the machine that broke it will usually spot why it went. An engineer working from a pallet three counties away will not.
Unit 14, Saracen Business Park
Saracen Way, Newark Road
Peterborough PE1 5WS
The workshop number is 01733 568834, and Darren Waterfield runs the site as General Manager South.
Gearbox repair in Peterborough
Gearboxes bring more people to us in this area than anything else, and they are where the most money gets wasted.
The instinct when one fails is to price a replacement. On large, obsolete or non standard industrial units that is frequently the slowest and most expensive option available. Lead times on the bigger boxes run to months, and a good proportion of what we see is no longer supported by anybody.
We handle worm and wormwheel, helical, helical bevel, planetary, shaft mounted and reduction units. Everything is stripped, cleaned and inspected before we quote, because until a gearbox is apart nobody can tell you honestly what is wrong with it. Where gears or shafts are no longer available we machine replacements to the original specification.
Repair is not always the answer. On small standard units a new gearbox can be quicker and no dearer, and we will say so. There is more detail on our gearbox repair page.
Electric motor repair and rewinds
Our stator winders rewind to the original manufacturer’s specification, using materials chosen for the duty the motor actually runs. Units are varnished, baked in temperature controlled ovens, reassembled and tested before they go back.
Rewind or replace is the judgement most people want help with. Small standard frames are often better replaced. Larger motors, special builds, ATEX units, anything with a modified shaft or an unusual voltage, and anything you cannot wait two months for, all point the other way.
Motors reach us from Peterborough sites for the usual reasons. Bearing failure, moisture getting in, single phasing, overloading, and the slow death of insulation on a motor that has run twenty years in a hot corner nobody visits. See motor repairs and rewinds and electric motor repair and servicing.
Pumps, drum motors and vibrator motors
Pump work covers submersible, centrifugal end suction, vertical multi stage, diaphragm and dosing units. Failed mechanical seals are the most common job, though plenty arrive needing a full overhaul, and spares come from the original manufacturers wherever they can be had. See pump repair and vacuum pump repair.
Drum motors and conveyor rollers carry more weight than their size suggests, because when one fails the whole line stops with it. That work is covered on our drum motor service and repair page.
We also build and repair vibrator motors, including Invicta units, which turn up constantly on screens, hoppers and feeders across the aggregates and food sites around here. Where a component simply cannot be bought we make it, using our custom machined parts capability, and the smaller jobs that sit alongside a repair are listed under additional engineering services.
New equipment and supply
We would rather sell you the right new unit than a rewind you do not need, so we supply as well as repair. That includes access to the UK’s largest stock of electric motors, gearboxes, pumps and drives, with same day delivery where the situation calls for it.
On motors, we are the only TEC Platinum Distributor in the region, which means proper technical support rather than a box shifted from a catalogue. The wider industrial motor range runs from standard single and three phase through cast iron frame, braked units and motors certified to IECEx and ATEX, and we modify stock motors to specification, including shaft changes, IP upgrades, encoder fitting and special voltages.
Alongside those we supply new geared motors and gearboxes from the leading manufacturers including special builds, pumps and rollers chosen for your duty rather than picked off a price list, our own range of vibrator motors for screens, hoppers and feeders, drum motors and conveyor drum rollers made to your dimensions, and inverters and variable speed drives with the setup and support to go with them.
How a repair works
Tell us what the unit is and where it is, and in most local cases we will collect it free of charge. Once it reaches the workshop it is dismantled into its component parts, cleaned, and examined by time served engineers who check bearings, gears, shafts, seals, windings and the housing itself.
You then get a written report setting out what was found, what the repair involves and how long it will take. Where it is useful we price a new equivalent alongside it, so you are comparing like with like rather than guessing. Nothing is repaired until you have agreed it.
Parts come from the original manufacturer wherever they can be obtained, and are machined here when they cannot. The unit is then rebuilt, run tested, painted and delivered back to your site.
Coverage from Peterborough
Free local collection and delivery across Peterborough and the surrounding area, and when a failure has stopped production we can usually get a van out the same day.
Beyond the city we cover Cambridgeshire, Huntingdon, St Ives, March, Wisbech, Spalding, Stamford, Oundle, Corby, Kettering and out towards Norfolk and Suffolk. Anything further afield comes to us by carrier.
Planned maintenance, not just breakdowns
A drive that has started to whine, run hot or weep oil is usually giving you weeks of notice. Most of what arrives here as an emergency did exactly that and nobody was looking.
We can set up planned servicing across a site so the drives that matter get inspected on a schedule. On critical gearboxes that means oil sampling and condition checks, on motors insulation testing and bearing inspection at sensible intervals. It is dull work that nobody notices, which is rather the point of it.
Industries we work with
Food and drink production, agriculture and grain handling, quarrying and aggregates, water and waste treatment, recycling and materials recovery, packaging, logistics and general manufacturing.
Peterborough has a particular density of food processing and materials handling, and neither tolerates downtime. A drive that fails in a chilled food plant is a different problem from one that fails in a warehouse, and the response has to reflect that.
Why a workshop on your doorstep
Anyone can take in a gearbox. What a workshop down the road can do is look at the failure in context.
Repeat failures usually are not component failures at all. They are alignment problems, the wrong lubricant, a coupling that has been worn for a year, or a drive quietly doing a duty it was never specified for. Working that out means somebody standing in front of the installation, not just the part.
There is also the plain question of where your job sits in the queue. Nothing here is waiting behind a national contract.
We are associate members of the Association of Electrical and Mechanical Trades, the recognised body for the electro-mechanical repair industry in the UK.
Frequently asked questions
Almost always, yes. Worm, helical, bevel, planetary and shaft mounted units all come through the workshop, including obsolete boxes the manufacturer no longer supports. Where gears or shafts cannot be bought any more, we machine replacements to the original specification. The exception is a housing cracked beyond recovery, and even then it is worth us looking before you write it off.
It depends on what is worn inside, which is only known once the unit is stripped. Bearings and seals are a modest job, complete gear sets cost considerably more, and machining a one-off shaft more again. We strip, inspect and quote before any work starts, so the figure reaches you before the bill does.
Lubrication is behind more failures than anything else, whether that is the wrong oil, a low level, or oil that has taken in water and metal particles. After that it is worn seals letting contamination in, misalignment and worn couplings loading the box in ways it was not designed for, and shock loading on conveyors and crushers chipping teeth outright.
It varies with frame size, winding specification and how much of the motor needs attention beyond the windings themselves. As a rule, the larger or more specialised the motor, the more clearly a rewind beats replacement. We quote after inspection rather than over the phone.
Unit 14, Saracen Business Park, Saracen Way, Newark Road, Peterborough PE1 5WS, and the direct number is 01733 568834. Collection is free locally and across Cambridgeshire and the surrounding counties, usually same day when a breakdown has stopped production. Darren Waterfield runs the site as General Manager South.
Talk to us
Tell us what the unit is, what it drives and what it has been doing, and we will give you a view before it leaves your site. If a repair makes sense we will arrange collection, and if a new unit is the better answer we will quote that instead. Call the Peterborough workshop on 01733 568834 or use the contact form.
