Habitat Management

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 Newts and other wildlife dig underground and can get under the straight-sided fences.

The solution was to install a curved bottomed plastic sheet into the ground, and to automate the process to save time and ultimately money for the client and the end user. After extensive research, engineering assessment and going through a design exercise, we came up with several design ideas and finally developed a system 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 idea met the legislation and would be enough to prevent the newts from escaping easily.

The new design plough system was created entirely in 3D CAD; harnessing the technical capabilities of the software to generate flat patterns, full assemblies to check form, tolerance and fit. Each component created for manufacturing methods such as laser cutting and machining from engineering drawing output from the 3D CAD, reducing the time to prototype. We fabricated and welded several working prototypes in our workshop, and still service the original prototype, which is still going strong after 100's of 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 0843 886 6468 or email design@p1technology.com.

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