Problems we help solve
For more than eight decades Flexible Drive has helped all types of customers with all manner of problems. We’ve supplied Australia’s widest range of cables, from those that operate anything and everything on cars and trucks, to cables that release lifeboats on ships, and our smallest cable, less than a millimetre thick, that operate medical microscopes.
We’ve faced and overcome major engineering challenges for our mechanical cables, wiper systems, cameras, mounts, and flexible shafts; many of which are now fitted on cars, buses, trucks, trains, trams, cranes, ships, work boats, leisure craft and even armoured vehicles in the service of defence.
Here's a few of those stories...
Many assumed the end of the car manufacturing industry in Australia would also see the exit of manufacturing skills, but companies like Flexible Drive continue to reinvent its manufacturing expertise and we go from strength to strength...
Our customers trains have been successfully and safely delivering passengers across Australia for the past few decades. However, how hard is it to shut off a fuel line if needed? Extremely hard, it seems, if it’s under a train...
Melbourne’s E-class trams are manufactured by Bombardier in Dandenong. Along with hundreds of local and overseas supplier parts comprising the build, we supply wiper systems for the trams....
When a system fails the results can be devastating. According to the coroner, basic steps could have been taken to prevent the fire that broke out on the Australian Navy patrol boat HMAS Westralian in 2003...
According to Wikipedia, a control system is a device that manages, commands, directs or regulates the behaviour of other devices or systems. Every kid with a billycart knows the importance of control systems: the rope attached to the pivoting front axel for steering, the crude wooden lever (or failing that, the soles of expensive Nike sneakers) for braking...
And, one of our more unusual challenges was limiting vibrations in the University of Adelaide butterfly enclosure. In chaos theory, the butterfly effect describes the way in which a small change in one part of a system can result in large differences in a later state...