Project Drive

A leading aerospace company has a production line consisting of multiple furnaces and quench pits capable of heat treating multiple batches of parts at a time. Their current hardware had reached the end of its life and was ready to be upgraded to modern standards. A new manipulator with full servo control, updated safety and interlock logic, and touchscreen operation was made to replace the old unit.

Solution

The company who originally built the furnaces for this production line was tasked with replacing the manipulator used to load and unload the furnaces, quench pits, and loading stations.

Corso Systems has worked with this furnace company across many industries on projects over the past few years, and was brought in due to our extensive motion experience, ability to deliver solid solutions quickly, and work with customers in high capacity production environments with little downtime.

We worked with the end user and furnace company to automate the operation of the machine, including servo controls, hydraulic controls, and VFDs. The system also included Keyence Safety Scanners to track the presence of personnel in the path of the machine and interlock the safety circuit to stop the machine to avoid hitting a person.

The system included a fast quench mode, allowing operators to get the heat treated parts into the quench pits 3x faster than before. The old machine utilized limit switches causing abrupt stop conditions. The new machine with servo control and encoders allows for stop conditions based on its actual position, making it easy to provide a smooth ramp down in speed to prevent any jarring motion.

Benefits

• New equipment will allow the facility to operate without issues for years to come

• Updated operator interfaces improve safety, process visibility, and production throughput

• Modern SCADA software allows for detailed process reporting

• Safety sensors and functionality on the manipulator is greatly improved

• Servo control allows for smoother operation of the machine, including ramp up and down speed adjustment to prevent high torque situations when starting and stopping the machine

Project Details      

Industry Aerospace

Location United States of America

Services HMI, Motion Control, Safety, Software Development, Startup and Commissioning

Technology

• Inductive Automation’s Ignition

• Allen Bradley PLC

• Keyence Safety Scanners

• SEW Eurodrive Servos and Controllers

• SQL Server

 Focus

• Operator Safety

• Process Visibility

• Automated controls

• Easy-to-use operator interfaces

• Clear alarming and acknowledgement

• Operator understanding of system