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Sulzer (manufacturer)
Encyclopedia
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
industrial engineering and manufacturing firm, founded by Salomon Sulzer-Bernet in 1775 and established as Sulzer Brothers Ltd. in 1834 in Winterthur
Winterthur
Winterthur is a city in the canton of Zurich in northern Switzerland. It has the country's sixth largest population with an estimate of more than 100,000 people. In the local dialect and by its inhabitants, it is usually abbreviated to Winti...
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
. Today it is a publicly owned
Public company
This is not the same as a Government-owned corporation.A public company or publicly traded company is a limited liability company that offers its securities for sale to the general public, typically through a stock exchange, or through market makers operating in over the counter markets...
company with international subsidiaries. The company's shares are listed on the Swiss Stock Exchange.
Sulzer Brothers helped develop shuttleless weaving
Weaving
Weaving is a method of fabric production in which two distinct sets of yarns or threads are interlaced at right angles to form a fabric or cloth. The other methods are knitting, lace making and felting. The longitudinal threads are called the warp and the lateral threads are the weft or filling...
, and their core business was loom
Loom
A loom is a device used to weave cloth. The basic purpose of any loom is to hold the warp threads under tension to facilitate the interweaving of the weft threads...
manufacture. Rudolf Diesel
Rudolf Diesel
Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel was a German inventor and mechanical engineer, famous for the invention of the diesel engine.-Early life:Diesel was born in Paris, France in 1858 the second of three children of Theodor and Elise Diesel. His parents were Bavarian immigrants living in Paris. Theodor...
worked for Sulzer in 1879, and in 1893 Sulzer bought certain rights to diesel engine
Diesel engine
A diesel engine is an internal combustion engine that uses the heat of compression to initiate ignition to burn the fuel, which is injected into the combustion chamber...
s. Sulzer built their first diesel engine in 1898.
World War II
Sulzer was blacklisted by the Allies during World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
due to an increase in trade with Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
. Sulzer refused to sign an agreement to limit the future sale of marine diesel engines to the Axis countries and was blacklisted by the Allies as a result.
Rail traction
Sulzer developed a series of rail traction engines in the 1930's and 1940's which were used extensively in diesel locomotiveDiesel locomotive
A diesel locomotive is a type of railroad locomotive in which the prime mover is a diesel engine, a reciprocating engine operating on the Diesel cycle as invented by Dr. Rudolf Diesel...
s in the UK, Europe and South America. A small number were used in locomotives in Africa and Australia. The Sulzer LDA (prefixed by the number of cylinders, and with a suffix related to the cylinder bore) engine was widely used by British Rail
British Rail
British Railways , which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was the operator of most of the rail transport in Great Britain between 1948 and 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the "Big Four" British railway companies and lasted until the gradual privatisation of British Rail, in stages...
. Many were built under licence by Vickers-Armstrong at Barrow
Barrow-in-Furness
Barrow-in-Furness is an industrial town and seaport which forms about half the territory of the wider Borough of Barrow-in-Furness in the county of Cumbria, England. It lies north of Liverpool, northwest of Manchester and southwest from the county town of Carlisle...
as six-, eight- and twelve-cylinder form. The twelve-cylinder engine was used in the British Rail Class 47
British Rail Class 47
The British Rail Class 47, is a class of British railway diesel-electric locomotive that was developed in the 1960s by Brush Traction. A total of 512 Class 47s were built at Crewe Works and Brush's Falcon Works, Loughborough between 1962 and 1968, which made them the most numerous class of British...
and several others. The 12LDA28 engine was a double bank
U engine
A U engine is a piston engine made up of two separate straight engines joined by gears or chains. It is similar to the H engine which couples two flat engines...
engine having, in effect, two six-cylinder engines side by side, rather than a V-type as favoured by many other manufacturers. Sulzer V-type engines for rail use bore the type number LVA (with a 50-degree angle between the banks).
In the late 1970's, locomotive rebuilder Morrison Knudsen installed a series of Sulzer power units into several existing locomotives. The first applications were of the marine based 6ASL25/30 & 8ASL25/30 series used in a Morrison-Knudsen demonstrator and four units for the Southern Pacific. This was merely reworking of an existing design into a new application
Ten 16 ASV25/30 3,600hp power units were installed into locomotives belonging to the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe
Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway
The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway , often abbreviated as Santa Fe, was one of the larger railroads in the United States. The company was first chartered in February 1859...
and the Union Pacific
Union Pacific Railroad
The Union Pacific Railroad , headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, is the largest railroad network in the United States. James R. Young is president, CEO and Chairman....
. Teething problems plagued these machines and their operation in revenue earning service was brief. Research into correcting their problems continued but was eventually curtailed by Morrison Knudsen late in 1982. These power units were descendents of the LVA range.
New Sulzer Diesel
In 1990 Sulzer spun off the diesel engine division into a separate company named "New Sulzer Diesel" (NSD) and sold most of the shares in it, retaining only a minority ownership. In 1997 NSD was absorbed by WärtsiläWärtsilä
Wärtsilä is a Finnish corporation which manufactures and services power sources and other equipment in the marine and energy markets. The core products of Wärtsilä include large combustion engines...
, creating Wärtsilä NSD. Wärtsilä NSD makes the world's largest diesel engine, the Wärtsilä-Sulzer RTA96-C
Wärtsilä-Sulzer RTA96-C
The Wärtsilä RT-flex96C is a two-stroke turbocharged low-speed diesel engine designed by the Finnish manufacturer Wärtsilä. It is currently considered the largest reciprocating engine in the world, designed for large container ships, running on heavy fuel oil...
.
Organisation
The company is divided in four main divisions:- Sulzer Pumps - PumpPumpA pump is a device used to move fluids, such as liquids, gases or slurries.A pump displaces a volume by physical or mechanical action. Pumps fall into three major groups: direct lift, displacement, and gravity pumps...
ing systems, 50% of the revenue and 5904 employees. It produces centrifugal pumps and agitators/mixers for the Oil, Hydrocarbon, Paper, Power Generation, Water, Food, Metals and Fertilizer industries at a global scale. - Sulzer Metco - Services and products for thermal spray and thin filmThin filmA thin film is a layer of material ranging from fractions of a nanometer to several micrometers in thickness. Electronic semiconductor devices and optical coatings are the main applications benefiting from thin film construction....
surface technologies, 21.3% of revenue with 2054 employees. - Sulzer Chemtech - Components and services for separation columns and static mixing, 21.5% of the revenue and 2393 employees.
- Sulzer Turbo Services - Service and repair of thermal turbomachineryTurbomachineryTurbomachinery, in mechanical engineering, describes machines that transfer energy between a rotor and a fluid, including both turbines and compressors. While a turbine transfers energy from a fluid to a rotor, a compressor transfers energy from a rotor to a fluid...
. Also manufactures spares for gas turbines, steam turbines, and compressors. 7.9% of revenue with 1179 employees.
Sulzer also operates Innotec, a small R&D division.