Hydraulic to Electric Conversions: Saving Time and Money

Work with machinery long enough, and you’ll go beyond just knowing how to use the equipment: you begin to understand it, learn its strengths and weaknesses, and figure out ways to improve it. IIS’s extensive experience with indexing equipment led to one such situation, which we were able to act open to improve our customers’ operations, and our own repair services. In fact, our analysis and upgrade led to a whole new service offering for IIS: the electric drive conversion for the Nissei Hydraulic ASB 650 Blow Molding Indexing Table.

For many years, hydraulic-powered indexing drives were the industry norm. As anyone who has worked extensively with hydraulics knows, the technology offers incredible benefits – with some drawbacks. Hydraulic leaks are messy, hydraulic fluid is expensive, and repairs can be frequent and costly. As a well-established repair shop for hydraulic indexers, IIS noticed something in the course of sourcing replacement parts: they were becoming more and more scarce, and costs were increasing commensurately. The machinery was becoming obsolete. 

Rather than continue to subject our customers to increasing parts costs, we rolled out another option: an electric drive conversion. Time-consuming and a major investment in the short term, the savings in reliability and production over the long term have proved attractive to many clients. The key to the conversion is a special adapter for the gearbox, called the KIT-ADT-43. This is a bolt-in replacement for the original HR-205 type hydraulic motor in the Nissei table. With cycle times reduced to 1.3 seconds for a 90° move in a standard precision assembly, or .99 seconds in a reduced backlash assembly, as well as a substantial reduction in energy usage, the benefits of the conversion speak for themselves. What’s more, our clients are typically eligible for state and federal tax credits for energy efficiency improvement investments.

Read more about our upgrade and conversion services on our upgrade packages page, or contact us with any questions.

FIRST Robotics Competition: Hitting the Boards

With development of teams’ FIRST Robotics robots in full swing, we’ll be taking a look this week at some of the details of this year’s Rebound Rumble competition, and how teams will be rising to the challenges presented by the game. But competitors – don’t look here for any team secrets. We’ll only get as close as a general assessment of factors in building the machines. 

Following in the footsteps of 2010’s soccer-themed “Breakaway” game and 2008’s “Overdrive” auto-racing-based competition, 2012 features another sports game: the Rebound Rumble. Just like in regular basketball, teams will be trying to score on one end of the court, and defending the opposite end. The court is a bit smaller than most, measuring 54 ft. long by 27 ft. wide, and there’s no three point line. There are a few other differences, too: instead of one basket at each end, there are four (at different heights, with higher point values for higher hoops), and there’s a raised bridge at mid-court. The biggest difference? The only players on the court will be constructed from metal, wires, and plastics: robots controlled wirelessly from the sidelines.

Incredibly, these robots are built completely from scratch by high school students, with advisement by a team of mentors (on which IIS personnel take part). All design, movement, and control must be planned and carried out to build a fully-functional, robotic Chris Paul (although Michael Jordan might be more likely to come to mind for the mentor teams). Think about everything that goes into a basketball shot: aim, angle of release, velocity/force, distance from the hoop, and countless other factors. Each must be converted into a command for the robot to understand and follow – simultaneously. And then there are other factors: Passing. Blocking. Fast breaks. All need to be accounted for and controlled.

As the competition develops, we’ll have all the details here. Keep reading our blog for updates!

FIRST Robotics Competition Kicks Off: IIS Prepares to Hoop It Up

It’s that time of year again: early January means the annual FIRST Robotics Competition has kicked into full gear. With teams formed, sponsors on board, and mentors eager to assist, the first big event of the season occurred on January 7: Competition Kickoff!  As experienced competitors know, that’s the day when we finally find out what, exactly, we’ll be competing at. Just in time for the return of the NBA, this year’s contest is called Rebound Rumble, and it’s just what it sounds like: a basketball game.

In future editions of this blog, we’ll take a closer look at how the 2012 FRC is unfolding. Today, though, we’ll learn more about Industrial Indexing System’s involvement and history with the contest, and a bit more about the contest itself. One of the great benefits of the in-depth knowledge provided by years of experience is the opportunity to pass it on, and there are many involved in the FIRST Robotics Competition who take up those reins, offering an unprecedented combination of education and fun to thousands of kids, nationwide. From the FIRST organizers themselves, to sponsors like Xerox and J.C. Penney, to mentor groups like IIS, we all get to have a little fun ourselves, while serving our community in one of the best ways possible.

Dating back seven years, IIS has been contributing time and expertise to FIRST Team 1559 at the Victor Senior High School in Victor, NY (from 2005 to 2008) and FIRST Team 3003 at Canandaigua Academy High School here in Canandaigua, NY (from 2009 to 2012), helping students in areas from marketing and promotion, to electrical systems, to drive train mechanics. Of course, our knowledge of robotics comes in handy as well. Working with students with several years of competition experience under their belts, as well as first timers to FRC and to robotics, we view the commitment of the team members as an inspiration to everyone. Beyond school-night commitments during the week, teams even come in on Saturdays to work on their robots!

Stay tuned for more information on the competition and the team! Fellow competitors or past participants, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out via the comments, our Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.

ARC 2012 Preview Part 1: A Look Back at sercos

As the ARC 2012 World Industry forum approaches, we thought it might be a worthy time to take a look at the software and protocols behind our automation systems. As regular customers and readers probably know, this means an in-depth look at sercos, specifically some of the latest uses and breakthroughs in device-to-control communication. Leading up to the February 6^th, 2012 conference, which features ODVA as a co-sponsor, we’ll take some time in our next several blog postings to look at both the big picture of sercos, and it’s specific applications.

First, a bit of history. Although sometimes identified as a motion control system, sercos is actually but a means to that end. In reality, it is a communication system – one that allows the intricate functions of motion control to take place with precise repeatability through constant communication and feedback between the operating device (the one doing the work) and the control device (the one where instructions – a desired time interval or cutting width, for instance – are input). This may sound a bit simplistic to experienced users familiar with the full potential of sercos, but, in a nutshell, this is the philosophy behind the system. 

From the original implementation of sercos, the protocol has been upgraded and updated to the current sercos III, which addresses the reality of the prevalence of computer network communication with full Ethernet support. The “Plug and Play” motto of sercos III is a clear indication that the system now aims to be a complete communication system for all types of devices and functions – and also aims to make it as user-friendly as possible.

Future postings on this topic will address the role of sercos in power efficiency, energy standards, and even marketing tactics. Contact us with your own thoughts or experiences with sercos!

No Bottlenecks: Motion Control Keeps Plastic Container Production Moving

A few weeks ago, we wrote about servomotors and bus communication systems in beverage can manufacturing. This week, we focus on plastic bottles. The extremely high volume and commensurate speed requirements for these products make them great examples of the uses and applications of motion control, which is why we keep returning to this industry. Beyond just soda bottles, this technology applies to other consumer containers as well: shampoo bottles, for instance, or food products like ketchup and mustard. Besides the high speed and precision molding required for most of these containers, motion control’s main contribution to their production is speeding tool changes for different sized bottles, shortening a process that can take valuable minutes, down to mere seconds.

Plastic container production also led IIS to an area of manufacturing that we might not have thought of just a few years ago: equipment upgrades. We’ve always offered our repair expertise for many types of machinery, but we’ve recently noticed that the increasing scarcity of parts for obsolete equipment was making repairs prohibitive, both to factories and to us. Using our production and motion control expertise, we’ve begun offering a hydraulic conversion upgrade packaging, featuring a number of benefits:

• Up-to-date machinery: less repairs and more available parts.
•  Reduced cycle time: by half, in many cases. Faster speed and less energy lead to much greater efficiency, which takes us to . . .
• Tax credits: There are a number of state and federal programs that offer tax breaks for equipment upgrades and purchases that reduce overall environmental impact.

There aren’t many reasons not to upgrade, according to these! For further details on this still-new service, be sure to contact IIS with your equipment details today.

Servomotors and Your Holiday Shopping

Trudging through the stores over these past few weeks, you probably didn’t give much thought to the bags you were carrying – other than how heavy they were. Now that it’s time for a breather from the holidays, though, we thought we’d take a closer look at that mainstay of the retail experience, the plastic bag. At its most simple, the plastic bag is created from an enormous roll of plastic (think in the thousands of pounds), fed through a series of processes on one machine – picture a giant web –  or several, culminating in a handy, lightweight way to carry your purchases. With more features – handles, perforations, gussets, internal seals or zippers – comes more machinery and greater need for precision, which is where servomotors and motion control come into play.

Some estimates place plastic bag usage in the United States at 60,000 per second. Obviously, production needs to occur at an incredible speed just to keep up with this demand. There can be, however, no tradeoff in accuracy. Movement and placement are critically important to ensure a uniform product with very little waste. The feedback and communication capabilities of motion control are ideal for all of these needs. Take, for instance, a heat seal process for plastic bags. This seal not only needs to be placed at precisely the same location on millions of bags – the heating element also needs to just touch the material – too much, and it will sear right through, too little, and the seal will not occur. With motion control, all elements of the process are occurring in perfect choreography, with the heat seal knowing just where the bags are on the roll, and when to lower and raise itself. Without an integrated motion control system, this just would not be possible.

Contact us or see our site for more uses of motion control, or let us know how we can help achieve your manufacturing needs!

SPS IPC Drives 2011: Our Recap

Exhibition SPS IPC Drives Presenter

Late last month, in the German industrial center of Nuremberg, automation companies from Europe and beyond convened at the SPS IPC Drives conference to explore some of the latest developments in motion control, drive systems, software, and more – and to discuss the future of these technologies, and manufacturing at large. Fitting for a nation renowned for its efficiency, the common thread connecting all of these technologies is that they refine manufacturing to unparalleled levels of precision and repeatability, all the while enabling faster and more accurate production than could be achieved through manual or mechanical methods. While the demands of a busy manufacturing shop did not allow us at IIS to make it to the trip to Germany, our partners at ODVA, sercos, and CC-Link were all exhibitors there, and we eagerly observed the developments from the show via its informative website.

Among some of the trends that exhibitors and conference participants alike showcased were:
•    Energy efficiency
•    Wireless control and communication among devices and equipment
•    “Future-safe” machinery, or equipment designed for both forward- and backward-compatibility

In terms of upcoming, future developments for automation:
•    Integrated safety controls
•    Modular motion control systems
•    Improved motor and transmission selection steps

For more, see this link. In addition, ZVEI, the German Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers’ Association, shared some state-of-the-industry information. The main points? With a 13% increase in motor sales and a major, 35% jump in AC drive sales, there is great cause for optimism in our business. Great news as we continue to improve manufacturing and help production facilities worldwide do their work more quickly, safely, and accurately.