Client Goal

Technical Goals

• Coordinated servo control
• Tension and position control
• Recipe Management
• Integrated CAD CAM Interface

Project Overview

Faced with mounting pressure to quickly move to flexible, made-to-order systems, the client turned to Tegron and The Manufacturer to revamp their existing coil-winding process. At the time, they were relying on several different machines and a time-consuming changeover process to produce coils of varying shapes and sizes. Our team came up with a design for a single machine capable of producing all variations of the wound coil product.

Along with new mechanical design provided by The Manufacturer, Tegron pulled out all the stops and proposed an entirely new control platform that would offer flexibility, increased quality control, less material waste, and minimal harm to the fragile coils. In short, our solution would guarantee high production speeds, simple machine setup, and quick product changeovers.

Mechanical Challenges

The client’s existing coil winders had two major design issues; extended change over time between products and product variability that affected downstream processes. Both issues were met with a servo driven winding design that provided increased process capability while simultaneously allowing for a near zero change over time. The increase in cycle time, near elimination of change over time, and reduction in scrap associated with improved process capability provided the total project return on investment required.

The “Backbone” of the Solution

Tegron chose Allen Bradley’s ControlLogix platform as the foundation of our control system. Unified logic, motion, and communications architecture made ControlLogix much more attractive than a fragmented approach that would involve separate logic, motion, and communications processors.

Boosting its appeal was its ability to perform all of these functions through a single processor while meeting the requirements for high speed. With the old equipment, in order to switch coil sizes, the client had to shut down the line while a two-man team exchanged cumbersome parts. Today, changeovers are as simple as scanning the bar code of the desired product and entering a build quality. Allen Bradley’s RSView32 provides the foundation for the operator interface. This interface is extended by Visual Basic to fully automate the process of making a coil from a design engineer’s desktop and the intial Solidworks’ model of a coil to the production ready recipe available for selection by the operator.

System Configuration

The new coil winder consists of two major sections – the inner, or “Onboard,” section, and the outer, or “Offboard,” section. The inner section is a rotating carousel with four wind arms, while the outer section is made up of a collection of four separate stations that load, glue, shape, and discharge the product.

A slip-ring provides time-critical communications between the Onboard and Offboard components. Redundant ControlNet bridges wired through the slip-ring provide communication between the Onboard ControlLogix processor and a remote chassis. A DeviceNet scanner within the remote rack relays status and control for all Offboard components. Allen Bradley’s servo amplifiers and motors are located on both the Onboard and Offboard sections of the winder. An Allen Bradley field-oriented control AC drive, selected for its ability to operate in torque mode with a speed offset, provides tension control for the unwind operation. We computed torque from the acceleration and speed of the winding axis and the tension set point, and calculated the diameter of the unwinding axis from the weight of the axis, transmitted by load cells. With the new coil-winder up and running, our client has joined the ranks of flexible manufacturers who are daily meeting increasing demand for made-to-order products.

Scope of Supply

• New Technology Development
• Scope Development
• CAD Documentation
• Commissioning & Start-up
• Control Panel Fabrication
• Electrical Construction Management
• Electrical Control Design
• Human Machine Interface Development
• PLC Software Development
• System Training
• Support Agreements
• Remote Monitoring & Support

The Outcome

Production Benefits

• Unified production
• Increased product quality
• Less material waste
• High production speed
• Simple setup and operation
• Rapid product changeovers