Product category:
Drives, motors and power transmission, couplings, clutches
News Release from: ABB Automation Tech (Drives and Motors) | Subject: ACS 600 variable speed drive
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 24 September 2002
Drive enables speedy changeover in
dyeing machine
An ACS 600 variable speed drive from ABB is helping an American seat belt manufacturer achieve the correct colouring of seat belts.
An ACS 600 variable speed drive from ABB is helping an American seat belt manufacturer achieve the correct colouring of seat belts The drive is installed on a seat belt dyeing machine, produced by Webtex of Todmorden, Lancashire
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 25 Jun 2001 at 8.00am (UK)
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The customer wanted a machine that would maintain the tension in the material while splicing new material onto the end of the web.
Maintaining web tension is crucial to dyeing the seatbelts with the right amount of dye and maintaining a consistent product quality.
The machine uses an accumulator, which stores seat belt material in normal operation and reels it out to the dyeing process when the in feed is stopped for splicing.
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Usually the carriage in the accumulator simply acts as a weight and the tension of the webbing will vary because of mechanical effects on the webbing.
To solve this problem and get better control of the carriage, Webtex fitted an ABB ACS600 drive to the accumulator.
"Before we used the ABB drive, maintaining the tension of the web would involve mechanical systems using weights, which would need to be physically changed whenever a new grade of material was run in the machine," explains David Henry of Webtex, the design engineer for the application.
"Now all we need do is feed new parameters into the drive and the changeover is complete." A load cell in the accumulator is now used to monitor the web tension during normal processing.
During a splice operation, the load value is used as set point and fed back to the ABB ACS600, which uses its standard internal PID Macro to give it full control of the position and velocity of the carriage.
Using a set of chain mechanisms, the rate of rise and fall of the carriage can be controlled accurately, maintaining the set tension.
The ACS 600 was chosen for the application because it could achieve the desired control using only its internal software with no further additions.
"The ACS 600 brings great benefits to the end-user.
It provides the repeatability and accuracy they need to maintain a quality product and is also very easy to set up and monitor," says Henry.
"Modern drives are increasingly being called upon to achieve much more than simple variable speed motor control, says Martin Davenport of ABB, who helped Webtex with the design of the application.
"By building control intelligence into the software of the drive, usually at no extra cost to the purchaser, these extra capabilities are being realised.
It is important that the drive supplier has the applications expertise, which allows the end user to benefit from these new features.".
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