Drives at work at cricket's hallowed ground

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March 2006 Motion Control & Drives

Home of the Marylebone Cricket Club (the MCC), Lord's cricket ground in London is considered by many enthusiasts to be the centre of the cricketing world. Named after Thomas Lord, owner of the first MCC ground, which was opened in 1787, the present day Lord's is not, however, in the same location as that original ground.

Photographer: Sarah Williams

In fact, Lord's moved to its present site in 1814. Strangely, the turf on which the first matches were played at the new ground was older than the ground itself, having been transferred from the previous location! Clearly, even in those days top quality turf was considered supremely important.

Today, Lord's is the setting for some of the world's finest cricket. In addition to test matches, it hosts one-day internationals and most of Middlesex's home games, as well as many club and village cricket finals. While much may have changed over the years, the famous Lord's turf is still central to the ground's success, and drives from Vacon are helping to keep it in prime condition.

And while rain may also be traditional for test matches played in England, the English climate can deliver long dry spells. This makes effective irrigation essential for maintaining the condition of the Lord's turf, which is why a new irrigation system for the playing area was installed in 2002. The control systems for this were provided by a water application specialist, ST Controls, of Stoke-on-Trent.

ST Controls, which supplies control systems for water features as well as for irrigation, has standardised on variable speed drives from Vacon. These are used to control the pressurised booster pump set at the heart of the new Lord's cricket ground irrigation installation. ST Controls finds that Vacon drives allow substantial energy savings to be achieved in irrigation systems, while in water feature applications the fast, accurate response of the drives allows precise pump control for dynamic special effects.

Also important is Vacon's design approach, which avoids large numbers of built-in special features that are rarely needed, but instead allows easy configuration for specialist applications with custom software developed by Vacon to suit the user's precise requirements. When minor changes or updates are needed, for example, the company has found that, in most cases, it is possible to provide end users with the instructions over the telephone so that they can carry out the work themselves.

Steve Tellwright, owner of ST Controls, explains that the company has been manufacturing specialised control systems for water-related applications for more than 12 years. "Until about three years ago, we used variable speed drives from a range of suppliers. We were then introduced to the Vacon products, and were very impressed by how easily they could be set up to meet our needs by using application-specific software."

For more information contact Rob Hare, CHI Control, 011 827 9124, [email protected]

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Motion Control & Drives

Drives at work at cricket's hallowed ground

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