Pentruder Modularity Benefits Drilling Work

Published: 30/9, 2019

Norrorts Betonghåltagning AB, a small concrete cutting company from Stockholm, Sweden, knows at first hand the benefits of using the full potential of Pentruder modularity. 

The two Pitkonen brothers, Hannes and Oskar, founded the company Norrorts Betonghåltagning AB some years back.  

“I started out in demolition in 1994 and got the question if I could drill,” Hannes recalls “The answer was ‘yes of course.’ I soon realized that it was a bit more to it. I eventually got employment at Håltagarna Borrteknik and was trained by ‘the old school guys’ who used to work at Urab, another large concrete cutting contractor at that time. They introduced me to Pentruder. In 2015 me and my younger brother Oskar started our own concrete cutting company, Norrorts Betonghåltagning AB, and from that it all took off. 

Today there are five concrete cutters in the company, and even though it is small, the jobs are not that small. Its first real big special job was when a contractor contacted the company with a request to drill three 23.6-in (600 mm) diameter holes, around 18 ft (5.5m) deep, and located 6.5 ft (2 m) below the surface, in the docks of the Värta harbor in Stockholm. No one really knew how hard the aggregate was nor how heavily reinforced the dock was.  

“Our first Pentruder was bought for this project, a hydraulic MD1,” says Hannes. “We tried several different solutions and machines at first, but finally when we got the MD1, it was like cutting in butter.” The drill bit was delivered by Pentruder distributor Scandinavian Diamondtool Consulting (SDC) and was 7.5 ft (2.3m.)  

In recent years, Norrorts Betonghåltagning AB has been contracted by the construction company Implenia for large infrastructural project in Stockholm. One such job involved a large lock and traffic point at Slussen, where boats, cars, subways, bicycles and pedestrians meet in the centre of Stockholm, which is going through a large modernization process. The job involved several projects, with wire, wall sawing and core drilling. 

“Last summer we got the task to take down some walls in an old chamber with the Pentruder 8-20HF wall saw,” says Hannes. “There were no drawings which we could access since parts of it were some sort of old military facility no longer in use. Every time we thought we were done, they found another level of concrete underneath the gravel.” In total, 450 tons of concrete was removed.  

 

Hannes adds the job couldn’t have been done without the ability to position the Pentruder track feet in different angles, adjust them and also mount one on the floor and the rest on the wall. 

Today Norrorts Betonghåltagning AB has a Pentruder 8-20HF Wall saw, one HF and one hydraulic MD1 Core drill, wire saw modules and accessories such as a stitch drilling carriage. The newest machine is the MD1, a heavy-duty core drill, which really impressed when drilling a 21-in (540-mm) deep and 47-in (1,200 mm) diameter hole in a heavily reinforced old concrete bridge beside the Hilton Hotel at Slussen.   

The set out was 26 ft (8 m) up the wall and the cutters had to build a rig that was stable enough for the heavy core, which was to be removed. The core bit alone weighed more than 440 lb (200 kg) and took quite an effort to get it in place. Once the drill started to spin, however, the cutting didn’t take longer than 2 hours before the hole was complete.  

“For us it is so important with the power and the modularity of Pentruder,” says Hannes. “The machines are real beasts that are designed for us professional cutters, and they save us a lot of time both in setting up and completing the job.”