Upgrade programme
AnyOEM Retrofit"
Your autoclave is sound. Its controls are not. We replace the control system, instrumentation and interlock safety on equipment built by anyone — including manufacturers who no longer exist — and leave the pressure envelope alone.
The problem
Orphaned equipment is more common than anyone admits.
A twenty-year-old vessel in good condition, running a control platform that went unsupported eight years ago. Spares bought from brokers. Batch records that no longer satisfy your customer's quality organisation. Replacement quoted at seven figures and eighteen months.
01
Spares have dried up
Control cards sourced from eBay and specialist brokers, at increasing cost and with no warranty. One failure away from an unplanned outage of unknown length.
02
The records fail audit
Paper charts or a proprietary export nobody can read. Your customer's quality team now asks for attributable, tamper-evident cure data and you cannot produce it.
03
The maker is gone
Acquired, wound up, or simply no longer interested in a machine sold in 2004. Nobody will take responsibility for the safety case.
The answer
Keep the steel. Replace the intelligence.
A CPC retrofit replaces controls, instrumentation and usually the vacuum manifold while leaving the pressure envelope, insulation and structure untouched. You keep the capital asset, the foundations and the footprint. You gain recipe control, per-port vacuum integrity checking, current interlock safety and records that pass audit.
- No pressure-envelope modification — no vessel requalification required
- 2–4 weeks on site per vessel, plannable inside a shutdown
- Re-survey and SAT included with a fresh certification package
- Safety brought to current standard — interlocks, over-temperature, relief, emergency stop
- Operators trained before restart, including the safety module
Safety is the usual reason to move first. Many orphaned machines are running door interlock logic that would not be accepted in a new installation today. A retrofit is often the cheapest route to a defensible safety case.
Scope
What a retrofit covers
Control system
New CPC panel, PLC and HMI. Existing field wiring reused where it is sound and replaced where it is not — we tell you which after the survey.
Instrumentation
Thermocouple loom, pressure and vacuum transducers, and calibration to a documented traceable standard.
Vacuum manifold
Individually monitored and independently valved ports with automatic pre-run leak testing, usually the single biggest quality gain.
Safety systems
Door interlock proving, redundant over-temperature, emergency stop path and relief review against current code.
Requalification
Temperature uniformity survey, system accuracy test and a certification package your auditor will accept.
Training
Operator and maintenance training on the new interface before restart, including the safety module.
Equipment we have retrofitted
Make is not the deciding factor
Condition of the pressure envelope is. If the vessel is sound, we can almost certainly modernise it.
Manufacturer names are used for identification only
Process
How a retrofit runs
Site survey
We attend, inspect the vessel and its safety systems, and record what is actually installed rather than what the drawings say. You get a written condition report.
Scope & quotation
A fixed scope with a clear boundary: what is replaced, what is retained, what is tested. No discovery invoices halfway through a shutdown.
Build & FAT
Panel built and software configured off site, then witnessed factory acceptance testing against your recipes before anything arrives.
Installation
Two to four weeks on site per vessel. Planned around your shutdown, not around our schedule.
Qualification
Survey, SAT and process capability demonstration, with the full certification package.
Handover
Operator and maintenance training, documentation, recommended spares list and a support agreement that starts on day one.
Send us a photo of your control panel.
Genuinely — that plus the vessel nameplate tells us most of what we need to say whether a retrofit makes sense.