Page 33 - MetalForming March 2019

Steel-belt conveyors provide the most capacity for carrying scrap.
gauge lamination scrap. Screw con- veyors handle wet or dry flowable chips or turnings. Drag conveyors move abra- sive scrap: wet or dry metal chips, fines and swarf. Oscillating conveyors handle stamping scrap, finished parts, die- cast scrap and any hot, dry or wet scrap. Pneumatic conveyors are ideal for wet or dry chips. Prab’s ScrapVeyor elimi- nates carryover of wet or dry stamping scrap.
MetalForming: That’s a lot. How do you know which one is the right one for a particular metal forming operation?
Anspaugh: A lot has to do with scrap size and volume. For example, steel-belt conveyors move a high vol- ume of scrap and are considered the workhorses of the industry, but some scrap types can cause carryover issues. Carryover, scrap caught in the belt that does not discharge, causes maintenance issues. Our ScrapVeyor, for example, with its trough design, offers a better alternative when it comes to carryover. Having the right conveyor is important as conveyors function as the lifeline for manufac-
turing stamping plants striving to avoid costly downtime.
MetalForming: What about expan- sion plans? How does that factor into conveyor decisions?
Anspaugh: We need to size the con- veyor width and determine the appro- priate belt speed. The conveyor must be pitched to achieve the appropriate discharge height. If a customer oper- ates one press today, but plans for three more within the next five years, then the conveyor must be designed to accommodate the three future presses. One press may generate 4000 to 10,000 lb./hr. of scrap, but with three presses, volume could be 40,000 to 50,000 lb./hr., requiring larger con- tainers and a shuttle conveyor load- out system.
MetalForming: Please describe the latest advancements in terms of fea- tures and controls, and to what extent Industry 4.0 drives such improvements.
West: Our smart-programming con- cepts provide maintenance-schedule alerts, and diagnostic-fault program- ming makes corrections without human intervention. For faults requir- ing manual correction, we provide a one-screen-control approach that walks the customer through the fault for quick resolution. We also offer
email/text notifications for system con- ditions that the customer would like to monitor.
West: Instead of crowding the screen with commands and control features not needed by everyone, our one- screen-control approach provides tai- lored screens with specific information required for operators, mechanics and supervisors. We’ve also assembled a 10-person IIoT team and are working with a German software company, Cumilocity, on facilitating the collec- tion of cloud preventive-data points— amp draws, run time, human interface (someone pushed a start/stop button), etc. We’re close to introducing this. (Editor’s note: At presstime, the date was set for the end of February.)
MetalForming: Please discuss the importance of maintenance, and the role of technology in maintaining conveyors.
Anspaugh: Factors such as material type and size, loading conditions and air temperature/air quality of the facil- ity all play a role in determining a sys- tem’s longevity. Our adaptive program- ming uses motor-load parameters to determine predictive maintenance. In some cases, we deploy external sensing to determine conditions for predictive maintenance.
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Fabrication: Conveyors
The offset-trough design on this conveyor eliminates scrap carryover.