Case Study
PASSIONATE ABOUT ENGINEERING
Creep Crane for Large Aircraft Manufacturer
Iconsys, Iconsys House, Hortonwood 33, Telford, TF1 7EX, UK T +44 (0)1952 607300 F +44 (0)1952 607333 [email protected] www.iconsys.co.uk
PROJECT OVERVIEWThe crane system consists of two gantry cranes in a master slave configuration each with two cross travel Hoist Crabs. All movements are controlled via one radio hand held operator panel which operates relays interfacing with a PLC on the master crane. Originally the master crane interfaced with the cross travel crabs via Mauell IO units to extend the signals across a bus-bar and collector system. The bus bar communication system was reported to be troublesome and the main cause of downtime. The master crane interfaced with the slave crane via a radio communication link and then onto the slave cross travel crabs via another set of Mauell IO units communicating via a different bus-bar and collector system.
CS0012
Original control setup
Old system (signal flow from Slave Hoist crab IO to Master crane PLC):
Slave Hoist crab IO Slave Hoist crab Maurer unit Slave crane Maurer unit Slave crane radio transmitter Master crane radio receiver Master crane PLC
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Case Study
PASSIONATE ABOUT ENGINEERING
Iconsys, Iconsys House, Hortonwood 33, Telford, TF1 7EX, UK T +44 (0)1952 607300 F +44 (0)1952 607333 [email protected] www.iconsys.co.uk
CS0012
New Control Setup
PROJECT FEEDBACKThe Customer was very happy with the end result as a more reliable system was designed, installed and commissioned and handed back to production well within shutdown period.
PROJECT SOLUTIONIconsys proposed to remove al the Maurer units thus making the Bus Bar communications redundant by using Siemens remote IO at each location connected to the PLC via a wireless device. As each location had a wireless connection this enabled us to also remove the radio communications between the two cranes. The original system worked on a basis of ‘relaying’ signals from one location to another using both the Maurer units and the radio communications therefore the hardwired IO was significantly reduced once the wireless system was in place.
New system (signal flow from Slave Hoist crab IO to Master crane PLC):
Slave Hoist crab IO Master crane PLC
As can be seen from the above example of signal flow, the new system reduced the amount of hardware for all remote IO connections and with the removal of the problematic devices the project was a great success.