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Heavy loads transported with wide ball rails

A Bosch Rexroth product story
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk editorial team Jul 10, 2007

Transporting products weighing up to 8 tonnes to heat treatment facilities required a heavy duty system, of which an important component is a wide ball rail system.

A company wanted to reliably and safely transport heavy, high value products between processing stations.

The handling systems contractor, SCM Materials Handling, found that a wide ball rail system from Bosch Rexroth enabled its engineers to develop a versatile and cost effective transport system.

In its design, the transport system had to be robust enough to carry the products, weighing 8 tonnes each, and the 2 tonne carriages that support the products.

The processing stations are, large heat treatment ovens operating at in excess of 600 deg C.

So parts of the transport system would be exposed almost continuously to high temperatures.

Not helping is a working environment with aggressive dust.

The products are transported over a horizontal distance of 25-30m.

At each processing station they have to be elevated by some 400mm vertically for loading into into the oven.

Although actual movement speed needed is low, movement has to be smooth and positional accuracy held within within 0.1mm at a processing station.

Reliability of operation - considering the high value of components transported - was paramount.

After carefully surveying the market for suitable, reliable and cost-effective equipment the engineers at SCM Materials Handling based their design on products from Rexroth.

"A big attraction of working with Rexroth was that, through past experience with the company, we knew that we could rely 100% on product quality and also that the company would be willing and able to provide us with any technical support we might need during the project," said Alan Watkins of SCM Materials Handling.

"Another very important factor in our decision was that Rexroth could supply all of the key components we needed for the project," he continued.

"Having a single source of supply is a very big benefit; not only does it simplify ordering and logistics, it also means that if support should be needed there's never any problem over divided responsibilities".

Working in close collaboration with Bosch Rexroth, SCM made extensive use of the Rexroth 45mm wide ball rail system.

This versatile system provides high load handling capacity in all directions.

It uses four ball circuits with very low operating friction.

The system also uses minimal lubrication.

Mounted on a heavy-duty fabricated steel framework, two continuous runs of ball rail are used to provide horizontal transport through the full 28m length of the installation.

The systems that raise the products vertically at each processing station also iuse the Rexroth 45mm ball rail.

"In spite of the high operating temperatures, we were able to use standard ball rail products," said Watkins.

"Providing the high degree of protection against dust ingress we needed was also straightforward as Rexroth products intrinsically offer a high degree of ingress protection and in demanding applications like ours this can easily be enhanced with readily available seal and scraper options".

Rexroth rack and pinion drives used with 'Indradrive' compact servodrives power the vertical and horizontal motions (vertical ball screw unit).

The system operates under manual or automatic control.

The controllers are easy to parameterise and incorporate a wide range of internal functions that can be used as building blocks when developing application software as standard.

The drive system is complemented by an electronic control panel (HMI) with a full colour display that makes extensive use of graphics.

The panel provides readily accessible information on the status and performance of the transport system and provides full control through an intuitive, easy to use interface.

* Guarding system - To guard the transport and handling system, SCM Materials Handling used the Rexroth EcoSafe protective fence system.

The Rexroth EcoSafe protective fence consists of modular panels that can be quickly assembled to guard areas of almost any shape or size.

Standard EcoSafe products are custom finished and were used for most of the installation.

te exception was those areas of the fence exposed to prolonged high temperatures.

Here, Rexroth fabricated and supplied stainless steel panels.

"This is a prestigious project for one of the world's leading engineering companies," said Watkins.

"Products from Bosch Rexroth, and the excellent support we received from the company, made it possible for us to produce an efficient, dependable and cost-effective solution.

Our client is delighted with how easy the system is to use and also with its performance.

Its reliability, a critical issue, has also proved to be beyond reproach.

Overall this has been a very successful project and we're looking forward to working with the Bosch Rexroth team on future contracts.".

Find out more about this article. Request a brochure, download technical specifications and request samples here.
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