Wonder world of pressure gauges

There’s something slightly Willy Wonkerish about Chris Woudenberg’s world of pressure gauges in Penrose, Auckland.  By Alan Titchall

“Pressure gauges and pressure calibration equipment are what we are all about,” he says, touring Energy NZ through the CPS offices - past the reception, through the storeroom, past an artistic looking wall featuring a mass of different pressure dial faces, and through a series of doors into a small room that is as neat as a hospital theatre. In here is an array of pressure calibration equipment, some ancient and some very modern, and one you won’t find in overseas catalogues, as he makes this one himself.

Woudenberg (pictured right) has been messing about with pressure gauges and calibration for over two decades, starting Custom Pressure Systems (now CPS) a year after leaving secondary school, and just one year after starting  a tech course.

“I didn’t have time for formal qualifications,” he says with a straight face. 

After five years in business, he moved into pressure gauge sales and in 1999 took over the Nuova Fima agency for New Zealand and later calibration equipment products from Crystal Engineering , DHI Instruments, Ralston, and  more recently Fluke.

On the bench of his lab are some serious looking pressure gauge calibration equipment, including a DHI-made automated pressure controller calibrator, and one of the few US-made piston gauges in the country. Worth around $90,000, it replaced an old dead weight tester, sitting on the other side of the room that is now redundant, but still a fine looking bit of gear.

“With its extreme accuracy, the piston gauge gets a lot of use from the energy sector, especially gas metering,” he says.

In the middle of the US-made equipment is Woudenberg’s own Mark V ‘CPS Comparator’, that has evolved from an original design he came up with in the mid 1990s.

Initially made for in-house work, checking gauges and onsite calibration work, it grew to be an integral part of CPS’ tool box.

“The main benefit of our own comparator is how quick it can calibrate a number of gauges,” he says.

“There is nothing else on the market that can ramp up a 300 bar gauge, check full scale and back to zero in under 30 seconds – nothing.”

This comparator makes up a full gauge checking system for pressures up to 700 bar/10,000 psi, he adds. Combined with the Ralston range of test adaptors, you can have a complete calibration system.

The CPS Comparator is exported to the USA, Canada and Australia and many other developed countires since 2004. Most of  the manufacturing is out-sourced to an engineering shop in Tauranga, but the parts are assembled by hand upstairs in a large room adjacent to Woudenberg’s office. We are escorted upstairs by a huge woolly pooch called Neka. Her role in the pressure gauge shop was never explained.

It takes about 20 minutes to complete assembly, he says. The parts are anodized a rich gold and, arranged in tidy rows, gleam like chocolate bars.

“About 80 percent of the success of the gauge is that colour,” Woudenberg jokes.

The latest model comes with an optional volume pump that allows for even quicker calibrations by compressing the internal air cavities with water.

Exports of the Kiwi-made comparator learnt CPS an accolade as a finalist in this year’s  DB Breweries Auckland  Emerging Exporter of the Year Awards.

Woudenberg is quite chuffed about that. “We sell about 400 of our own comparators annually, and expect to sell an extra 200 of the model with the water pump option over the next year. Exports are growing.”

On display inside Woudenberg’s managing director’s office is a collection of early CPS Comparator, including the very first one that was sold to Tech Rentals around the corner in Penrose.

“They were still using it until a few months ago, and didn’t want to part with it. I had to give them a new one.”

In concept and design, the first CPS pressure comparator is not a lot different from the latest Mark V, with the exception of that export winning gold anodising – of course.