and other coolant handling applications. The products offered include technically advanced convoluted hoses with stainless steel rings to absorb the relative movement between engine and intercooler. Specially developed convolutes minimise resistance to flexing and loads transferred to connection spigots. The company has its own in-house testing facilities to carry out load movement trials, accelerated dynamic testing to approve functional integrity, and so on. For high-pressure applications, James Dawson’s cuffless clamping system can provide an effective seal to existing metalwork – at the same time allowing the full hose length to absorb any offset or movement. It has also developed a special fluorocarbon based compound to cope with gas components at temperatures of up to 275° C, helping to enable the reduction of exhaust outputs. In the area of organic rubber hoses, the company can offer a range of different options, including one-piece hoses, legged hoses, large bore hoses and hoses with inserts. Finally, its range of ductings constructed from recyclable thermoplastic elastomer (TPE) offers high standards of flex-
ibility and durability with resistance to ozone, weathering and engine compartment oil splashing, to name just a few of its benefits. “All our products are bespoke,” adds Mr Edwards. “At our company there is no such thing as standard lines. Instead, we collaborate with customers as early as we can in the engine design to make the products they need to fit their machines.”
New focus on development The above point leads us on to an important shift of focus currently taking place at the company. Up until recently, the collaboration between James Dawson and its clients would work as follows: the client would send a drawing of their design to the company. Its material scientists would then choose the right material for the application, and its technical specialists would look at ways to create the product using existing processes. But this is changing. Mr Edwards explains: “Moving forward we would like to be working with our customers from the very start of the product development stage. We will be focused on product optimisation to get just the right balance between quality and price. It’s a strategy of increased
customer integration and more focused innovation. So much so that rather than our current tagline of ‘James Dawson – Global Hose Specialists’, in the future it will be ‘James Dawson – Engineered Hose Solutions’. To this end, the company has been focusing investments on R&D and creating unique solutions. This year it purchased a new lab mixer in order to explore the capabilities of advanced compounds with a view to bringing ground-breaking new products to the market. September 2014 will see the appointment of a new Head of Innovation & Technology to lead James Dawson’s new R&D team. The basis of the new strategy will be formed of three interlinked concepts, according to Mr Edwards. “The first of these will be customer integration. This means working with customers very closely at an early stage so we can produce fit-for-purpose, optimised products.” The second concept revolves around ‘focused innovation’: developing new materials or working on ways to solve the problems customers experience with exisitng products. “For example, a customer recently came to us wanting to use a silicone hose in applications at up to 550° C. We thought
