£70,000 savings for Smurfit Kappa from replacement drive project 16 March 2012

Cardboard packaging manufacturer Smurfit Kappa is reporting savings close to £70,000 from a cardboard sheet stacking machine refurbishment project that used ABB motion controls.

The project, at its Mold, North Wales site, involved plant comprising two hydraulic lift tables, each fed via five conveyor sections under separate 7.5kW load-matching servo drive control.

Phil Davies, senior electrical engineer for the plant, explains that when a servo drive failed and the OEM informed him that they were obsolete, he first loaned a spare drive from a sister plant in Dublin and then turned to ABB.

He also says that the OEM concerned offered new servo drives at £7,600 a pop, and recommended that its service engineer would need to oversee the installation and carry out commissioning – resulting in £82,000 costs and a one-week shutdown.

ABB, on the other hand, offered two options: the first an ABB industrial drive and new motor gearbox; the second an ABB motion control drive, ACSM1, reusing the existing servo motor gearboxes.

Says Davies: "At first sight, the first option looked the simpler solution, given the reasonably straightforward application of controlling the conveyor's speed. However, the additional work involved with changing all the servo motors for standard ac motors, made it physically a much bigger project than the second option."

Yet, the second option presented its own challenges, as the company had limited experience with installing and commissioning servo drives. However, ABB offered technical support and at a 70% saving compared to the OEM's solution, it was no brainer.

The first stage involved installing an ACSM1 to prove the equipment, which was completed over a weekend. Says Davies: "We were able to install the new drive alongside an existing drive and do most of the cabling in advance. This allowed us time to commission the drive and ensure the speed of the conveyor [was] correct."

The ACSM1 worked with the original permanent magnet motor, and set up and commissioning went ahead with no major problems, he says.

The next step was to decide whether to change all of the remaining drives or just enough to release some spares. "As the stacker is in two levels, each with its own control cabinet, a sensible solution was to replace all of the drives in one level," states Davies.

All of the old equipment was removed and one ABB general purpose drive and five ABB motion control drives were installed along with associated control gear. "As the new drives came with keypads, that can display multiple lines of information, we decided to mount these on the panel door to make programming, fault diagnosis and monitoring easier in the future," comments Davies.

With that done, energy monitoring showed that over a year the modified stacker would save more than £1,000 in energy costs, compared to the original, which equates to 7.9 metric tons of CO2 per year.

"Overall, this was a very good solution in lots of ways," concludes Davies. "We increased the serviceable life of the stacker for many years to come and saved in the region of £70,000 by not using the OEM's solution.

"As well as this, we gained a better understanding of how our machines work through a process of in house development, as well as built a good relationship, support network and trust in our supplier, ABB.

"In addition, by removing the existing drives on the stacker, we gained a stock of spares to support several plants within the SK Group, with the added bonus of saving over £1,000 per year in energy costs."

Brian Tinham

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