The University of Auckland has developed a National Satellite Testing Facility (NSTF) in the School of Engineering city campus. They had purchased a shaker table with the purpose inducing vibration simulating the launch of objects into space. The shaker has 3 linear motors so it can move with 3 degrees of freedom up to 2000 Hz and it weighs 10 tonnes.

The NSTF lab is in the bottom of the new building in the Engineering School.  First, we had to determine if there was a way to get shaker in the desired room.  We determined the doors to the lab were not wide enough for the shaker to go through in its normal orientation so the job entailed removing the door frames, rotating the shaker 90° outside the building and then rotating it to the normal orientation once inside the laboratory after having passed through 5 sets of doors.  To rotate the 10t machine inside the building a temporary gantry was required to be built. Our scope included:

• Preliminary design work to determine if the shaker table could fit through the doors when
  on its side and if it was possible to lift and rotate the shaker within the laboratory
  constraints.
• Manufacturing drawings & CPEng certification for the construction of the gantry frame.
• Moving all equipment from the port and container devanning.
• Assembly of the gantry crane in the laboratory.
• Rotation of the shaker outside the building with a crane and moving it through the building
  to the correct location on skates.
• Rotation and placement of the shaker and disassembly of the gantry crane.

This job was undertaken with Machinery Relocations Ltd.