BCH manufactures process systems for the food and confectionery industries. The company specialises in turnkey systems for the manufacture of a range of products, including starch gel-based liquorice, fruit products, caramel, syrups, jams, and preserves. BCH also serves the food sector with process systems for the production of soups, sauces, sweet and savoury fillings and a range of dips and dressings.
Recently, the company ran into a design challenge with the impending obsolescence of a key control component on its high-speed guillotine machine which features as part of their extrusion systems and is also supplied as a stand-alone option for other industries including pet food. The control component becoming obsolete was the servo gearbox on the guillotine control system which has a profound impact on the overall performance of the guillotine in terms of speed and cutting accuracy.
BCH project manager Marc Oddy said: “The need to change this gearbox and servo unit was due to the existing option we used becoming obsolete. Therefore, it pushed us into finding alternative options. This opened the opportunity to have more control over our cutting capability. We knew that loss of torque under intensive working conditions would be a major challenge for the chosen solution and could have stopped us achieving our targets for speed and cut length accuracy. When we looked at the torque and accuracy elements required for a servo gearbox, we noticed that most gearbox manufacturer’s products lost a lot of torque when you reduce the ratio.
“This pointed us towards the Apex Dynamics range and in particular their KF180 High Precision Planetary Gearbox series and in upgrading the machine design the changes have now been made to integrate the Apex KF180 Gearbox. The only roadblock we ran into in implementing the new design was finalising the ratio selection we required on the gearbox, and Apex assisted us with the flexibility for us to test the different ratios. However, with Apex’s help we modified the previous design, implemented the unit, and tested the new capability, which then allowed us to choose the correct ratio to meet our requirements.
“We have been delighted with the results of the new design and the KF180 Gearbox is proving itself to be a robust unit that can deal with the high speed long running service required. In overall performance terms we have been able to increase our guillotine cutting speed to 600rpm and also achieve better cutting accuracy on the length of 2mm, compared to 5mm previously. These performance improvements are very significant.
“We chose the KF180, due to the two critical elements of good torque retention and continuous running capability and have not been disappointed at all with the actual performance of the unit. Throughout this project we have had excellent technical and logistical support from Apex Dynamics and their local manager Malcolm Hillary has been very active in enabling us to test out the options we wanted to try. Malcolm has also been proactive in alerting us to innovative machine control solutions and keeping us up to date with servo technology which may be of interest in other machines in our range.”