Home / Market Sectors / Automotive
Pneumatics, Assembly Tools and Fluid Power for the Automotive Industry
Automotive manufacturing equipment runs on compressed air, hydraulic oil and controlled torque. The clamps on a welding jig, the nutrunners on the trim line, the spray guns in the paint shop and the presses in the stamping area all depend on fluid power, and when one of them stops, the line stops with it.
Control Gear Group, specialists in compressed air and industrial equipment, has supplied and serviced fluid power systems since 1973. Our engineers work on site across South Wales and the South West from Treforest, and we supply equipment UK-wide.
What Does an Automotive Plant Need From Its Fluid Power Supplier?
Line uptime comes first. After that: fastening you can prove joint by joint, a paint finish that doesn’t need rework, a compressor house that isn’t inflating the energy bill, and compliance records that stand up to an inspector.
Those priorities are more connected than most supplier lists suggest. The compressed air that drives your Festo cylinders also feeds the spray guns and, on many sites, the air-fed masks in the paint booth, so oil or water in it shortens seal life on the line and spoils the finish in the booth. A supplier who sees one part of that chain fixes the symptom and misses the cause upstream.
Control Gear supplies and supports pneumatics, assembly tools, spray finishing equipment, compressed air, hydraulics, extraction, filtration and hose for vehicle and component plants.
50+
years of industrial equipment experience
Festo and IMI Norgren Pneumatics on Production and Assembly Lines
Pneumatics was the first thing Control Gear did, and it’s still where many line stoppages start. Grippers, clamps and weld-gun cylinders cycle all shift, and a worn seal or a failing valve terminal stops a cell as surely as a broken robot.
Festo Pneumatics and Genuine Spares
As an official Festo partner, we supply and support Festo pneumatics and automation components: valves, cylinders, air preparation units and electric drives, including actuators and valves for body-in-white welding, assembly and end-of-line testing.
Many lines arrive from German machine builders with Festo fitted throughout, so we source exact replacement parts by part number, with same-day access to genuine Festo spares.
Repairs and Valve Terminal Retrofits
Our workshop repairs DSBC and DNC ISO cylinders, VUVG, MPA and VTEM valve terminals and MS series FRL units.
Where an older cell carries a rack of individual valves, we retrofit a single Festo valve terminal in their place, leaving your team fewer valves to stock and fewer joints to chase for leaks.
IMI Norgren Valves and Machine Safety
Presses and manual load stations need safety valves that fail to a known state. As an authorised IMI Norgren distributor, we supply Norgren safety valves for press control, two-hand control and lockout, designed to help you comply with ISO 13849-1, the standard for safety-related parts of machine control systems.
Spray Booths, Paint Lines and Product Finishing
Paint is where a plant’s quality is most visible and its health risks are hardest to control. Our Powergear Spray & Air division, part of Control Gear Group since the 1990s, is one of the UK’s largest suppliers of industrial spray finishing and fluid handling equipment. In partnership with ITW, and working closely with manufacturers such as Graco, we supply:
- Application equipment: manual and automatic spray guns, airless and air-assisted guns and electrostatic applicators
- Material supply: pressure-fed tanks, pumps and 2K plural-component machines
- Booths and plant: paint mixing rooms, dry filter and waterwash booths, downdraught and conveyorised layouts, and powder recovery booths
- Handling and preparation: reciprocators, conveyors and Hodge Clemco blast cabinets
We deliver paint and powder finishing plant as a turnkey package. Our spray and product finishing page sets out the range.
Two-pack paints contain isocyanates, which HSE describes as one of the main causes of occupational asthma in the UK. Its guidance on two-pack isocyanate paints expects spraying in a booth or room with extraction, kept at slight negative pressure and marked with its clearance time, and sprayers in air-fed breathing apparatus. Booth, extraction and breathing air have to work together, so we treat them as one system.
One limit is worth stating plainly. HSE gives vehicle paint spraying as an example of work that can create an explosive atmosphere under DSEAR, and the zone classification belongs to your own DSEAR assessment. We supply booths and equipment for the zone you give us, so if a line change has moved the spraying, update the assessment first.
Atlas Copco Assembly Tools, Torque Control and HAV Testing
A safety-critical joint has to be tightened to specification, and on most automotive lines the result has to be recorded too. Transducerised nutrunners do both, logging every tightening so a quality query traces back to the tool.
We’re an authorised distributor for Atlas Copco Industrial Tools, the assembly tools business of one of the world’s largest compressed air manufacturers. We supply pneumatic, electric, cordless and transducerised tools with controllers, plus self-pierce riveting and flow drill fastening, both body-assembly joining methods. Our workshop repairs, services and calibrates them, as our industrial tools and automation page explains.
Grinders, sanders and impact wrenches also bring hand-arm vibration. The Control of Vibration at Work Regulations 2005 set a daily exposure action value of 2.5 m/s² A(8) and a limit value of 5 m/s² A(8). Our IOSH-certified engineers:
- Survey your tools on site
- Analyse vibration
- Set trigger-time limits
- Introduce a traffic-light system so operators know which tools need managing
Paint-Shop Air Quality and Compressor House Energy
Oil aerosol in the air line leaves fisheyes in the finish, and water causes blistering. Both mean rework. For paint shops we specify oil-free compressors delivering Class 0 air under ISO 8573-1, the international standard that classifies compressed air purity by particles, water and oil. See our page on compressed air for the automotive industry for dryer and filter choices.
The air-fed masks in your booth need their own checks. HSE’s guidance on respiratory protection for spraying says the air supplied to breathing apparatus must be tested at least every three months, with monthly line checks advised for two-pack spraying. Our engineers test breathing air against BS EN 12021, the breathing air quality standard.
Leaks waste power whether the line is busy or not. We’re one of the longest established Atlas Copco Premier Distributors in the UK, and our compressed air team carries out:
- Ultrasonic leak detection
- Flow monitoring and energy audits
- Installation of VSD compressors and heat recovery kits
Air receivers are pressure vessels. Under regulation 8 of the Pressure Systems Safety Regulations 2000, a pressure system must not be operated without a written scheme of examination by a competent person. We prepare Written Schemes of Examination for compressed air systems.
Welding Fume, Grinding Dust and LEV Testing
Body-in-white welding, grinding, sanding and machining all put fume, dust or oil mist into the air your operators breathe. As an authorised Nederman distributor and Gold Channel Partner, we supply Nederman extraction arms, mobile and stationary filters, oil mist collectors and combustible dust equipment.
Under regulation 9 of the COSHH Regulations 2002, local exhaust ventilation (LEV) must be thoroughly examined and tested at least once every 14 months. Schedule 4 shortens that to six months for dry grinding, abrading or polishing of metal for more than 12 hours a week.
Our certified engineers carry out LEV testing, and our dust and fume extraction team can match a new hood or arm to the process.
Hydraulics, Hose and Filtration for Presses and Test Rigs
Hydraulics turns up wherever a plant needs force: presses, work holding and test rigs. We supply and repair pumps, valves, motors, cylinders and power units, and we design and build test rigs for automotive and aerospace work.
HYDAC Filtration and Fluid Care
HYDAC Filtration and Fluid Care
As a partner of HYDAC, the German fluid power and filtration manufacturer, we also supply its filtration, accumulators and fluid care equipment through our hydraulics division.
Hydraulic Accumulators and PSSR
Hydraulic Accumulators and PSSR
Hydraulic accumulators fall under PSSR too. Our PSSR-accredited workshop offers same-day removal, recertification and refit, plus oil sampling and condition monitoring to catch contamination before it damages a pump.
Hydraulic and Industrial Hose
Hydraulic and Industrial Hose
Hose is the part most likely to fail in service. Our BFPA-certified hose team manufactures hydraulic and industrial hose assemblies to order, with pressure testing and certification.
Coolant, Paint and Resin Filtration
Coolant, Paint and Resin Filtration
For process fluids, we filter machining coolant, paints and resins, and supply spray booth filtration. We’ve been an authorised Pall industrial filtration distributor for over 20 years and are official distributors for 3M Cuno. Our industrial and process filtration team also handles condition monitoring.
Talk to Control Gear About Your Line
We hold ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 accreditation.
- Body-in-white and assembly: Festo and IMI Norgren cylinders, valve terminals and safety valves
- Fastening and joining: Atlas Copco transducerised tools, self-pierce riveting, calibration
- Paint shop: spray guns, 2K machines, booths, booth filtration
- Compressor house: oil-free Class 0 compressors, leak detection, heat recovery, WSEs
- Press shop and test: hydraulic repairs, HYDAC filtration, accumulators, hose assemblies
- Health and safety: Nederman extraction, LEV, HAV and breathing air testing
If one cell keeps stopping, send us the Festo or Norgren part numbers and our team will come back with genuine spares or a valve terminal retrofit. If your nutrunners are due for calibration, or nobody has measured vibration on the sanding line, ask our engineers for a tool survey. If the paint shop is seeing fisheyes, book an air quality test before you change the paint. Call our Treforest team on 01443 843126 to arrange a site visit.
Get in touch
Contact Control Gear today
Tell us about your site and we’ll come back with the right service, audit or system recommendation.
- Visit us Heol Groeswen, Treforest Industrial Estate, Pontypridd, Rhondda Cynon Taff, CF37 5YF
- Call us 01443 843126
- Email us enquiries@control-gear.com
Mon–Fri · 09:00–17:00
24/7 emergency call-out available