Habitat Management
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Our project brief for Legacy Habitat Management was to design a machine to combat the problem of installing Newt Fencing. Newts are a protected species in the UK and they require habitat management, especially when construction or agricultural work is involved. The original process was labour and time intensive; involving hours and hours of work of teams of people, installing straight partitions part underground part over ground post after post. This was not an ideal solution as the Newts dig underground and can get under the straight-sided fences.
The solution was to somehow install curved bottomed plastic sheeting into the ground, and to automate the process to save time and ultimately money for the client and the end user. After extensive research into the industry, we came up with a design to allow sheeting to be fed at an angle into the ground with a pre-constructed curved shape. This would be ploughed into the ground and the soil would back fill, holding the fence in a curved position underground. This would be enough to prevent the newts from escaping easily.
The sheet metal designed plough was created entirely in SolidWorks; harnessing the technical capabilities of the software to generate flat patterns for laser cutting and swift 2D Drawing output, reducing the time to prototype. We fabricated and welded the working prototype in our workshop, and still service this prototype – still going strong after hours of newt protecting service! From concept to manufacture, P1 technology and Engineering solutions made it happen.
For more information on P1 projects or to discuss how we can help with habitat management or bespoke engineering design please do not hesitate to contact us on 0114 288 4422 or email
design@p1technology.com
.