Page 18 - MetalForming March 2020

Modern Press Controls
of the jobs we see; most dies require 16 sensors or fewer. That said, almost every stamper has a couple of those highly complex jobs requiring more die-protection capacity, so press con- trols have evolved accordingly.”
Case in point: Clairon Metals, a metal stamper in Covington, GA, upgraded its die-protection program
Stampers are requiring more and more from
their press controls—for traditional chores such as die protection and
tonnage monitoring, but also for “commu-
nication and the abili- ty to share informa-
tion and integrate safety data between the other
press-line equip- ment including feed lines, transfer
systems and unloaders,” says John Eby,
product manager at Toledo Integrated Systems. Shown
is Toledo’s Maximizer PLC- based fully integrated press
automation and control system.
by investing in a control with additional inputs and outputs, along with tonnage monitoring and production tracking. With the new control (from Cieco) installed, die-maintenance activities dropped from 40 man-hr./day to just 5. In addition, with tonnage monitor- ing the plant has reduced its costs to
repair broken tools by 70 percent.
Horsepower and Memory
As far as press-control programming goes, “that’s an exciting topic,” says Finnerty. We’ve got die protection down pat. Now, processing power is king. For example, our new SmartPac Pro offers about five times the processing power of our previous control, and there’s 130-times more memory.”
What does more memory and horse- power mean to the stamper? “We’re able to add more capability without adding complexity,” Finnerty continues. “Added die protection functionality is a perfect example. We can program the control to purposely ignore faults dur- ing a certain portion of the stroke on certain sensor types. In addition, we can offer very flexible monitoring logic, allowing users to specify that a sensor has to be on or off during certain peri- ods, and we have the onboard memory to store all of these parameters for all of the dies in inventory.” MF
16 MetalForming/March 2020
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