Highlights
MacDonald Humfrey has just completed the successful installation of 15 'Baggage Orientation Devices' (BODs) into Manchester Airport 's three passenger terminals.
The existing Invision CTX 5500 x-ray machines which incorporated the standard front end active adapters required a great deal of manual intervention to ensure the correct bag orientation was presented to the x-ray machine, especially during the busy peak periods.
During these times, additional personnel were required to be positioned locally to ensure bag misalignments were immediately responded to and did not affect the system throughputs dramatically.
Following on from the successful implementation at Larnaca and Paphos Airports, of the new BODs, designed and developed by MacDonald Humfrey (Automation) Ltd., Manchester Airport undertook a trial for one of their existing CTX 550 x-ray machines at Terminal One.
The BOD's were originally designed to act as a stand alone orientation device but to enable the devices to be easily and transparently incorporated into the space available at Manchester Airport . The BOD was required to replace the existing CTX 550 Active Adapter machine.
MacDonald Humfrey (Automation) Ltd. undertook the complete integrated design of the new unit and developed the new BOD controls and communication interfaces such that the BOD was transparent to the CTX 5500 machine.
This then allowed the existing active adapters to be disconnected from the CTX 5500 x-ray machines and be replaced with the new units.
Manchester Airport undertook trials with the first unit for 6 weeks and now under a phased implementation programme has replaced all CTX 5500 Active Adapter machines with the new MacDonald Humfrey (Automation) Ltd. Bag Orientation Device (BOD).
MacDonald Humfrey (Automation) Ltd. was responsible for the complete design and development, installation and commissioning of the new Bag Orientation Devices. |
