Product category:
Automation and assembly systems
News Release from: Raumo Automaatika | Subject: Retrofit control systems
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 26 November 2004
Retrofit modern controls to assembly
lines
Renovation of a control system can restore technical characteristics of used assembly lines and even raise their productivity, as one lighting manufacturer has discovered.
Management of Estonian branch of well-known manufacturer of lighting products, Glamox Group, applied to Raumo Automaatika for retrofitting an existing assembly line with a modern control system This line arrived in Estonia from Norway where it had successfully operated more than 15 years
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 20 Aug 2004 at 8.00am (UK)
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For years it had done its work and the old control equipment and sensors were nearing the end of their operating life.
The line consists of eight conveyer modules, six load-unload modules and six workstations for manual assembling and testing of lighting equipment.
Every conveyer module consists of upper and lower roll conveyers.
Components are fed forwards to the workstations by the upper one and assembled fittings fed back to the packing area by the lower one.
The control system supplied by Raumo Automaatika is based on PLC technology and linked with factory Information management.
It is possible to key in preset values from a shift manager desk directly to PLC data memory and send production data to the plant data base.
An assembly operator activates a workstation by special push-button and a PLC logs this workstation onto the system.
Activated and empty workstation requests data from a PLC.
The control system automatically fills workstations according to the order in which requests arrive.
Once all activated workstations are filled, the PLC starts filling the upper conveyers.
In that mode the conveyers work as temporary buffer stocks.
This solution brings details of light fittings closer to the workstations and so decrease operators' waiting time.
If the 'traffic' on the upper conveyers depends on order of requests and is regulated then on the lower line, operation can then be quite chaotic.
Nobody knows when an operator sends an assembled and tested light fitting to the packing area.
Often two workers who are sitting side by side do it one after another.
Therefore it is important to regularise the order of operating the unloaders and conveyers.
It all controlled by PLC.
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