“If we would have just compared component costs, we would have never embraced ‘On-Machine’ technology and we wouldn’t have realized the surprisingly significant financial savings it provided us.”
So proclaims David Ansell, director of controls engineering and field operations at Acco Systems. This Warren, Mich., manufacturer of material handling systems—an original equipment manufacturer (OEM), in industry parlance—has more than eight decades of experience evaluating and integrating the latest technologies into its portfolio of product solutions.
“After we were convinced to adopt this new design philosophy, we needed to convince customers of the potential benefits. With one customer, an automotive manufacturer, the subject was taboo within their organization for a long time,” Ansell continues. But that customer has now had a change of heart, and is embracing On-Machine approaches wholeheartedly. “Their objective now,” Ansell says, “is to move forward in terms of technology, while getting the maximum amount of return on their investment.”
“On-Machine” is Rockwell Automation’s version of the design concept of moving automation components out of control enclosures and mounting them directly on the machines being controlled. The concept began to get traction in the mid-1990’s in Europe, and has been gaining popularity in the United States. The Milwaukee automation manufacturer gathered its products into a bundle to make it easier to assemble a system.
Placing components directly on the machine, conveyor line or other equipment, eliminates the large control enclosure that was previously required for each machine or part of a process line. This reduces floor space requirements for a manufacturing line and opens up the plant visually so that a supervisor, engineer or technician can see more of the operation at a glance. Components are typically wired with a fieldbus, which simplifies installation. The drawback lies in the initial cost. Sensitive components such as programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and motor drives that were previously protected from the harsh factory environment by an enclosure now must be packaged individually for protection, adding cost to each component.
In Acco’s case, the customer was looking for higher utilization of existing personnel, and because the systems can be reconfigured effectively and efficiently, Acco was able to take responsibility for some setup functions. Still, Ansell says, “We were cautious of how we approached it. The numbers we were calculating were kind of ‘gut feel’ in terms of how much we could potentially save by using this new design. Fortunately, our ‘gut feel’ paid off.”
Paybacks are sweet
At the end of the project, Acco actually gave money back to the customer. “We’re talking millions of dollars in savings on the electrical portion of the job, and that makes up 40 percent of the total job,” Ansell points out.
Another benefit of this design is improved inventory management. David Girard, senior controls project engineer at Cinetic Automation, Farmington Hills, Mich., an OEM designer and builder of assembly equipment, explains, “Before, when we built control systems, we had to figure out all the cabinets and components we were going to need, order them, and then wait for them to be delivered. With our increasingly condensed production schedules, we don’t have time to do that anymore.”
Because On-Machine systems use a more simplified design than previous architectures, customers reap the benefits of replacement inventory, keeping a stock of components at their plant, says Girard. “If they need to add more inputs to their systems, they can grab an input block off the shelf and plug it in.”
Further, this design architecture also accelerates design time. “The time we’re allowed to design, from concept to final, is so much shorter than it used to be,” Girard observes. “It’s 50 percent of what it was 10 years ago.” But the On-Machine approach helps relieve that pressure, he says, by placing more focus on mechanical placement of the control devices on the machines, and less focus on cabinetry. Acco’s Ansell agrees. “Because we don’t have to draw and continually update plans for complex equipment cabinets and all the associated wiring, we can eliminate weeks of design time.”
The On-Machine methodology also significantly boosts flexiblity for Cinetic Automation in meeting the changing design needs of its customers. “Just think about it—we can have 20 inputs on a machine, and then the next day a design change comes through and we need double or triple that number,” says Girard. “If you were building a panel with input/output (I/O) modules in it, you physically wouldn’t be able to triple the amount because you would have needed to plan for a large amount of future expansion in duct, terminals, connectors and available panel and I/O space.”
Schuler Hydrap, located in Plüderhausen, Germany, specializes in the manufacture of hydraulic presses designed to meet the demands of electric appliance manufacturers and automotive suppliers. The company has traditionally relied upon a conventional PLC and a proprietary hydraulic controller for its press control system. The hydraulic controller is the core competence of Schuler, and must be secured so that the company’s intellectual property can be preserved. But the company realized recently that it needed an architecture that could be more easily modified to fit customer requirements while preserving the intellectual property.
A control platform based on personal computer (PC) technology would provide the ability to integrate hydraulic control into machine control logic where it could be easily modified as well as protected. “A control like the PLC—with absolute-based addressing and no local data encapsulation—just does not belong with this class of controllers,” says Clement Peters, corporate manager, controls and drives design, for Schuler.
The company researched available solutions and chose to implement control software from Beckhoff, an automation supplier based in Verl, Germany, with U.S. offices in Minneapolis. The PC platform allowed Schuler to integrate all control tasks—from sequence logic to hydraulic control to drive control—in one uniform application.
“The integration of the hydraulic control into the machine control software allowed us to run an improved process, and thereby improve the quality of the manufactured parts,” says Ralf Sohr, manager, electric design, at Schuler Hydrap.
Fast protocol
Schuler used a fieldbus system to connect the controller with I/O devices. Much of the system involved motion control and hydraulic motion, which require communication times of less than one millisecond. Beckhoff has developed a communication protocol that resides in the Ethernet protocol stack along with transmission control protocol/internet protocol (TCP/IP) that it calls EtherCat. Running this Ethernet solution enabled Schuler to improve cycle times for its control system.
Giving OEMs the ability to customize the components is an important benefit that automation suppliers can provide. The OEM machine builder wants to provide a product to its customers that looks like theirs, not an amalgamation of parts from various vendors—just as Beckhoff supplied a solution that allowed its customer to provide a machine incorporating various controls in one box, as well as allowing import of the OEM’s custom HMI.
Ryan Legg, machine tool industry marketing manager, Mitsubishi Electric Automation, in Vernon Hills, Ill., expands on that concept. “Controllers customized for unique OEM requirements include allowing them to put names on screens. Also, we sometimes private-label controllers so that the OEM’s name appears on the bezel. However, most customizing is on the operator interface itself. This includes the shop floor programming systems. We provide a graphical approach that doesn’t require knowledge of “G” codes. Many OEM customers don’t want to, or can’t, hire operators with as high a technical training as in past.”
TrafficWerks Systems Inc. is a provider of both hardware systems and Web-based traffic and road use information to local and federal government agencies. The Newport Beach, Calif., company was asked to develop several products for a toll agency, including the Advanced Toll Payment Machine (ATPM). The ATPM automates the toll-paying process by allowing customers to pay the toll using paper currency, coin or a combination, and receive change, if necessary. The ATPM can also print a receipt of the transaction and even has the ability to accept credit and debit cards for toll payment.
The foundation of the system consists of lane controllers that determine class of vehicle (single- or double-axle) and determines the amount of the toll. TrafficWerks just added I/O devices from Opto 22, a Temecula, Calif., supplier of automation and information products. Opto 22’s Snap Ultimate I/O provides the necessary link that enabled the company to automate this toll-payment system.
“Typically, it’s a toll booth operator who gets the information from the lane controller who then confirms the vehicle type and appropriate toll,” says Bill Foster, president of TrafficWerks. But the ATPM system eliminates the need for a toll booth operator. “Opto 22’s hardware intelligence and programmability allows it to parse the message string from the lane controller and interface with the ATPM’s bill acceptor, coin acceptor, coin dispenser and other components, and ensure that correct tolls are applied, payment is received and correct change is dispensed.”
According to Foster, “The bottom line is, we know that many of our customers lose money if they have their toll booths manned 24 hours a day. Using TrafficWerks’ ATPM on the graveyard shift, on holidays and the like, relieves them of this, and lets them reduce man hours and realize tremendous savings without sacrificing service.”
Switching gears a from an OEM that makes equipment to speed cars through toll booths, consider a machine builder that helps automotive firms manufacture a better diesel engine.
ABCO Automation manufactured a custom-designed vibration damper torque cell vision system for various diesel engines for a large automotive firm. A vibration damper is the diesel engine version of a gasoline engine’s harmonic balancer. While the engine is in the operation, certain levels of harmonics are generated within the crankshaft that causes premature metal fatigue. The vibration damper’s function is to reduce or eliminate this noise.
The Brown Summit, N.C., robot/vision integrator built its system using a vision system from Natick, Mass.-based Cognex Corp. to produce a digital image that is displayed on a monitor whenever a bolt pattern is presented to the camera for inspection. The system uses pattern-matching algorithms to determine bolt location and crankshaft positioning in the cell. This information is used to identify engine types for the automation equipment. A six-axis robot is utilized to position the camera and torque gun, so that each bolt pattern can be inspected. Once the crankshaft has been positioned, the vision system captures another image to verify the bolt location before the robot moves the torque gun into position.
If the vibration damper is not properly attached to the crankshaft, the damage could be catastrophic. This system provides assurance for the manufacturer, as well as its customers, that the damper is in place and properly installed.
Lest one think that the only choices for OEM competitive advantage lie with high-powered computing equipment or other complexity, consider the situation of Wizard International. The Mukilteo, Wash., company claims to be the leading producer of computerized mat cutting machines. Mats, in this case, are the borders placed around pictures before they are mounted in frames for display in the living room.
The Wizard machine has a movable cutter that requires electric power and a control signal. Routing cable to a movable part can contribute to warranty problems, or even safety concerns, if not done properly. To gain a competitive edge by improving product quality, the company implemented a “ReadyChain” cable carrier composed of a “Micro Energy” chain cable carrier and “Chainflex” continuous-flex cables from igus, East Providence, R.I. The company saved almost one-third of the cost of a competing solution with this design.
Wizard Research and Development Engineer Walt Krein states, “Not only do we save valuable manpower and reduce engineering and purchasing costs, but we also improve the quality of our product. It was an obvious choice.”
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