In this presentation Mark Lane focuses on a project Optima has completed for a large paper-making company. The problem that the customer faced on the machine was a mixture of obsolescence and unreliability.
Optima improved the machine’s performance by at least 20% by completely re-designing four areas of its control system:
Drives and PLC control
Safety system
Pneumatics
Web tension control
The problem that the customer faced on this machine was a mixture of obsolescence and unreliability. The customer also had a requirement with regards to the machine’s safety. We looked at upgrading the winder’s guard panel which was well over 30 years old.
There were four winders at the customer side and each was controlled by a slightly different operator desk with hand-operated brake control and unwind. The unwind control was located in the middle of the desk(image above) and was a wheel-type system. Operators used it to stop the machine or to ensure the smooth winding of paper. I will not go into the complexities of dual-roll winders in this presentation but this is a machine that winds paper at the speed of 1000 metres per minute. The machine slits and rewinds paper and board of a basis weight of 40 to 400 gsm.
This slide shows the condition of the old control cabinets. On some occasions the drives were failing so badly that the whole machine would ramp away. Due to the hard wiring in the control cubicle, operators struggled with fault-finding. The cubicles were not only very untidy but also raised concerns about safety.
As part of circuits upgrade the pneumatics of the machine were looked at, as well.
Having looked at the PUWER assessment that we were given, we re-designed the whole control system – both the drives system( picture on the right-hand side ) and the pneumatics of the machine. Optima included safe-speed monitoring – any deviation in the speed would automatically stop the machine safely. We also incorporated a safety scanner at the end of the production line.
With winders of this nature tension control is crucial. We used our expert knowledge in web tension control and incorporated brand new heavy duty loadcells( right ). There was a brake control system to predict torque from tension set points( left ).
This slide shows parts of the safety system we designed for this machine.
We looked at the old pneumatics panel at the start of this presentation. The right-hand side picture shows the new panel that we built. We re-designed not only the panel layout but also managed to raise its safety integrity.
The operator desk again was designed with the operators’ requirements in mind. We gathered a lot of feedback from them and used it at the design stage. The four winders that we eventually upgraded for this customer are now operated in the same manner. This allows operators to move from one winder to another without the need of extra training.
The next few slides show several HMI screenshots in more detail. This one shows a comprehensive alarm display.
The snapshot above shows a system counting the metres of paper run on the machine for any particular shift.
The emergency stop screen indicates the status of the various e-stop sections of the machine.
A general view of the machine is shown on the Home screen of the HMI.
This is a comprehensive view of the recipe system screen. The system would save recipes for each type and each weight of paper products.
This is the screen indicating the torque bias of the rewind section.