Together we build a world that stands on solid and sustainable foundations.” This is the promise that Junttan Oy, a global piling specialist, has been fulfilling since it was established in 1976: almost 50 years of designing, manufacturing and servicing pile driving rigs, hydraulic hammers and drilling rigs.
With two locations in Canada – Lacombe, Alta. and Saint-Hyacinthe, Que. – Junttan Canada stands behind the well-known brands Junttan, ExcaDrill and PTC, keeping its promise and offering excellent piling equipment services to its valued customers.
Furthering this commitment to Canada’s piling industry, Junttan offers its spare parts container, delivered directly to remote or long-term worksites. The mobile 20-foot unit is tailored to the fleet and worksite environment, with all the essential tools, technology and parts needed to save time, reduce costs and minimize downtime. “About 10 years ago, we put together our first service and parts containers for one of our customers operating at a large piling site in remote Kazakhstan,” said Sami Vartiainen, spare parts manager at Junttan Oy.
The nearest parts and services were far away, risking a rig production shutdown for days if something happened. “We built the contents of the parts container based on rig serial number information, what critical parts were on each rig, checking against our parts sales history for the same equipment to make up the order. Because in many cases, parts are only half the solution, we also included the correctly equipped service container,” he said. Vartiainen recalls one particular incident when having the correct parts on site when needed made a big difference in production.
“With the correct parts selection and our trained service technicians, we can move from rig to rig on busy days and get equipment back to operating within hours. With our service engineer on-site availability, we have reduced downtimes to almost zero.”
Sami Vartiainen, Junttan Oy
“I was on the barge with our HHxl-hammer and xCU-power pack. Suddenly, it started to lose power and the hammer was slowing down. We realized from the power pack display diagnostics window that we had a blockage at the fuel filters, which was odd since the engineer service had been done only about 100 hours earlier. We had boxes of filters on hand in the container, changed them and the power pack ran only for another few hours before the same problem occurred. What was causing the fuel filters to block? After more investigation, we discovered water in the diesel fuel. A new tank of diesel was ordered for the site, and soon, with new filters, everything was working properly. This is something that can easily happen in the field, but if we hadn’t had all those filters at the container on site, we could have lost days of production waiting for them to arrive,” he said.
All service containers have the basic hand tool set needed to service rigs, hammers, power pack and vibros, along with regular power tools and welding equipment. Depending on the equipment the container serves, any necessary special tools will also be included. Containers hold only basic manual diagnostics tools, such as pressure gauges and multimeters. Digital monitoring tools are used only when Junttan group service engineers are on-site. All containers located to cold-weather conditions are equipped with a heating system, usually electric heaters.
“We have had very good results keeping equipment running for the maximum production hours with our container solutions and having service teams available,” said Vartiainen. “With the correct parts selection and our trained service technicians, we can move from rig to rig on busy days and get equipment back to operating within hours. With our service engineer on-site availability, we have reduced downtimes to almost zero.”
Many Junttan equipment users have their own skilled service crews and, in those cases, the company mainly offers a parts container or, if needed, can include the necessary tools. “The most common failures we see are electric cable damage between the hammer and rig power pack, all kinds of CAN bus control system malfunctions, mechanical failures on hammer wearing parts, piling cylinder changes and winch motor changes,” said Vartiainen.
The service container is easy to use since the tools are those normally found in any workshop. There are very few Junttan-specific tools, and those come with user instructions. All parts are labelled with the part numbers, descriptions and QR code. Customers can use Junttan’s printed part books, which are in the container or the digital parts catalogue to identify the correct parts for each piece of equipment. There are also scheduled maintenance parts lists in the container. This makes it easy to collect the needed parts and quantities from the correct bin location.
Normally, planning of the container project starts well before Junttan ships it to site. “For large sites, we need to consult with the main contractor on the location of the container, power supply and any other issues such as access to the site,” Vartiainen said. One example of how having a combined container and crew available can make a big difference to costs and timelines happened a few years ago at Kemi, Finland.
“For that project, 10 to 15 Junttan piling rigs drove piles for over a year,” said Vartiainen. “There were hundreds of kilometres of concrete piles to drive and more than half the time the northern Finland winter conditions pushed equipment to the maximum. And yet we kept the downtime close to zero. Our customer was very pleased and suggested that this kind of service could be applied even to smaller jobs.”
The company’s short-term focus has been on developing the container systems mostly around the HHx-hammer rental business support, but now that is running well, they are working to ensure they have the correct solutions available for new equipment, such as the DR rigs and vibratory hammers, including the Junttan Rapid Impaction hammers.
Working closely with piling contractors and geotechnical engineers, Junttan continues to develop new products in its commitment to advancing the entire industry.