Page 28 - MetalForming September 2015

Moving thousands of pounds of scrap underground and out of the Drive Auto- motive plant falls on the shoulders of
43 hinged steel-belt conveyors, most similar to the one shown here. The facility stamps parts as small as muffler clamps and as large as full body sides.
Christened in March 1995 to sup- port the BMW assembly facility in Greer, SC, the Drive Automo- tive Industries of America, Inc. plant in nearby Piedmont has grown consider- ably and consistently. In fact, the 1 mil- lion-plus-sq.-ft. facility recently grew by another 30,000 sq. ft. to make room for its third blanking line, commis- sioned this past July.
From humble beginnings with one tandem press line and one scrap con- veyor, the plant (part of the Cosma/ Magna group of companies) now counts —in addition to its three blanking lines —five tandem lines (four hydraulic and one mechanical), a transfer press and three progressive-die presses. Stamping parts as small as muffler brackets to as large as full body sides, from steel and aluminum, that press lineup yields some 2000 to 2500 tons of steel scrap per week, and another several hun- dred pounds of aluminum scrap. Fol- lowing the installation of a new series of scrap conveyors to accommodate
Drive Automotive
Drives Scrap Underground
...via a fleet of 43 conveyors tasked with moving
some 2500 tons of steel scrap per week down and out of its more than 1 million-sq.-ft. stamping plant.
Here we detail the technology that keeps the conveyors, and the scrap, moving.
26 MetalForming/September 2015
www.metalformingmagazine.com
BY BRAD F. KUVIN, EDITOR
the recently added blanking line, the plant now hosts 43 conveyors that move the scrap underground to staging areas and, ultimately, to scrap trailers.
“We have two separate scrap-staging areas, one for steel and one for alu- minum,” shares Drive Automotive proj- ect manager Frank Dressler, “and a sys- tem set up to route the scrap. The scrap-system PLC communicates with the individual press controls to direct the scrap appropriately using shuttle conveyors linked to the main hinged- steel-belt conveyors.”
Moving such a great volume of scrap requires reliable conveyors, “and that’s exactly what we have,” says Dressler, praising the plant’s decision made some 20 years ago to rely on German conveyor manufacturer Goessling (with U.S. operations in Johnson City, TN).
“We originally tried rubber-belt con- veyors,” recalls Dressler, harking back to the early 1990s when he worked for a Cosma group company in Germany. “However, the belts deteriorated pre-
maturely from the sharp scrap. The switch to steel belts eliminated that concern.”
Dressler notes several additional benefits realized by conveyor-design features, including hinged belt seg- ments fabricated in one piece, from cold-rolled steel, across the total effec- tive width of the conveyor.
“This, along with the conveyor side rails, eliminates any gaps,” says Dressler, “that might allow scrap, par- ticularly small, thin pieces, to fall between the segments and cause prob- lems, such as jamming the conveyor drive motor.”
Another key design feature is the use of roller chains on each side of the hinged belt to drive the conveyors.
“All of the tension,” Dressler notes, “absorbs through the rollers of the chain and not the hinged belt pins, helping to maximize belt life. In fact, we just replaced one of the oldest belts in the plant, installed in 1997, after 19 years of practically 24/7 operation.”