Brake pad machining line ramps flexibility with Siemens TIA 13 February 2014

Machine builder Orwin is reporting improved production flexibility on an unnamed customer's 18-axis brake pad machining and assembly line, since moving to a new automation system from Siemens partner Cleveland Systems.

Tam Ashcroft, director at Cleveland Systems explains that the firm specified Siemens TIA (Totally Integrated Automation) for its control system design and commissioning flexibility.

"We selected the Sinamics S7-300 PLC, S120 18-Axis servo controllers, Profibus distributed links and the MP277 10-inch touch screen HMIs as an integrated and proven answer for the machine's control functionality," says Ashcroft.

The automation system reconfiguration entailed connecting the S7-300 PLC to the S120 drives via Profibus DP digital fieldbus, he explains. Standard Siemens 'telegrams' were configured to achieve cyclic data transfer, giving full PLC control and monitoring of each drive.

Traversing block control was used, giving 64 pre-defined movements for each axis – and the S120 servo controllers were connected to each motor using Drive CLIQ technology. This provided optimised plug and play diagnostic capabilities.

Cleveland and Siemens developed and submitted a modular software design strategy, along with sample code and timing plans for the implementation – focusing on straightforward system configuration, ease of navigation and future maintenance.

"With the solution provided by Cleveland and Siemens, all control aspects of the brake pad machining and assembly production have been tackled," comments Brian Murphy from Orwin.

"As a result, the end user has seen significant improvements in terms of reliability, repeatability, clearer diagnostics information, production flexibility and overall efficiencies for the brake pad machining production."

"The system now has easily navigable software supported by the communication intelligence that sits behind the Siemens' TIA approach," adds John Inskip from Siemens Industry.

"In areas such as recipe controls, the machine operators can simply adjust the parameters over the HMI and, together with the traversing block movements that are also editable from the S7-300 PLC, it now provides the user with a level of production control and flexibility that is positively supporting its business."

Brian Tinham

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