Dry line concrete
block handling system
The old control panel was 25 years old and had been left in
an awful state following countless modifications made over the years. The
drawings were never updated to reflect the modifications which made fault
finding a long and tedious procedure.
We designed, manufactured, installed and commissioned a new
control system utilising Allen Bradley Compactlogix PLC and remote IO, Siemens
switch gear and drives. Now the customer has more control, increased
productivity and up to date drawings.
Palletiser control
system
This OEM customer had designed a layer palletiser which was
to be used for palletising news papers at a printing factory in Italy. We
designed, manufactured, installed and commissioned the control system. We
utilised Schneider PLC, switch gear and drives. Below you can see the machine in production:
Machine safety
project
The customer asked us to upgrade the machine safety systems
across a number of their factories all over the UK. We carried out the initial
risk assessment on each machine across all sites and highlighted the areas
which needed to have a more reliable safety system in place.
We designed,
installed and commissioned the new fail safe systems and integrated them with
the existing machinery.
We utilised Siemens safety controllers, PLC’s and switch
gear as per customer’s specification. The project included installation of
global emergency stops, light curtains, gate switches, exchange systems,
pneumatic/hydraulic dump valves and electrical safety contactors.
Automated Nailing / Routering Gantry
We were contracted to upgrade the control system on an automated gantry for the nailing / routering of OSB boards on prefabricated housing wall panels. The panels are designed in the client’s design office using AutoCAD, the XYZ coordinates for the studs, OSB boards, nailing vectors and cut lines are exported to text files and stored in a database, for later use by our control system.
We utilised a Siemens S7-1500 PLC and S120 Servo drives for the gantry, nail guns, and router control, and a PC with Siemens WinCC Advanced runtime for the operator interface. Windows VBScript was used to select, open and interpret the panel text files. The video shows the process of selecting and checking a panel file to use.
Concrete Block Machine
Our client acquired a second-hand block machine for the production of dense concrete blocks, many of the control system components were obsolete and vulnerable to failure.
We designed, manufactured and commissioned a new control system, utilising an Allen Bradley GuardLogix PLC for control and safety, and a PC with Allen Bradley FactoryTalk View runtime for the operator interface. The video shows a simulation of the process on the operator interface.
