Innovative couplings have proved vital in the design of the drive shaft for the world's longest suction pump dredge, operating with absolute reliability in some of the harshest conditions imaginable. When a large, underwater sand mine in Florida reached a depth where the existing pump dredge was becoming ineffectual due to the depth that the sand deposit reached, the mine's operators thought that they would have to abandon their preferred dredging method and adopt clamshell-style dredging in order to extend the mine from 21 to 60 metres, and so allow another 40 years of mining. They approached DSC, one of world's foremost experts in the design and build of dredging technology to supply the equipment. The company approached Dredging Supply (DSC) -the industry leader in dredging technology - with its brief, which got DSC to wondering if there might not be a pump dredge solution after all. DSC president Bob Wetta comments: "During the design brief it was obvious that clamshell dredging was only being considered due to the depths that will eventually be required of the apparatus. We are always keen to supply our customers with their desired solution, so we suggested that a 60 metre dredge pump would be a possibility. We had already built a 36 metre pump successfully; we figured that this one's just a little longer."
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