When reject rates on a choc-ice packaging line began to climb, the company needed an engineering solution. The resulting scheme, featuring Control Techniques Drives, has cut rejects by 90% and given a rapid payback measured in months!
Falling accuracies and drift on the synchronisation between conveyor speeds and the actions within the packaging section on this line have resulted in increasing reject rates. Because the waste is a mixture of ice cream and packaging, the only solution was to send it to land-fill, which, of course, was an additional cost on top of the lost production.
Rewinds & J. Windsor, a Control Techniques drives reseller, analysed the problem and designed a solution based on six servo drives. The key to the solution is precise synchronisation between the drives themselves and the choc-ice production line.
Six Control Techniques Maxi Maestro high performance DC servo amplifiers were chosen for the control of the lane/crimping drives, another for the wrapper feeder whilst a 7.5 kW Unidrive SP powers the jaw drive, with its on-board SM application module provides the complete programming for the wrapping machine, eliminating the need for the PLC previously employed.
KEY BENEFITS
REJECTS CUT BY 90%
LINE PRODUCTION BOOSTED
SAVINGS TO PRODUCTION COSTS
REDUCED COSTS FROM WASTE HANDLING
PROJECT PAYBACK FASTER THAN ANTICIPATED
UNIDRIVE SP'S UNIQUE FLEXIBILITY AND CONNECTIVITY
The key to this project is the functionality of the Unidrive SP, explains Rewinds and J. Windsor s Project Manager, Mark Swayne. We used the SM applications module as the programming platform, using Control Techniques SyPT programming software.This gave us the performance of a level 3 PLC, which greatly simplified the project, eliminated the need for a PLC and made the solution highly cost-effective. Now, any length of product can be accommodated by simple parameter adjustments and the whole system is digitally locked into precise synchronism.
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