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Whitewater, WI -- For automotive parts manufacturer Wescast Industries, manufacturing a consistently produced casting is critical to the quality of their signature product, exhaust manifolds.
Located in Wingham, Ontario, Wescast designs, casts, machines, and assembles, high-quality engineered iron products for automotive original equipment manufacturers and Tier 1 customers for the car and light truck markets in North America and Europe. They are the world’s largest producer of exhaust manifolds and have built a reputation for providing unique customer specific quality parts.
Needs Assessment
By continually evaluating their customer needs and a desire to maintain high quality levels, Wescast embarked upon a project to renovate an area of their plant that required equipment and process updates. This part of the plant was responsible for metering recycled sand, fines, and a bentonite clay premix for casting sand. The system comprised of two production lines utilizing three screw conveyors for each line. The conveyors transferred the recycled sand, fines, and premix into two mullers (mixers). From there the materials were conveyed to a sand molding area where molds were produced.
Operators of the equipment were running into many problems with inaccurate measurements and materials plugging the conveyors. The system also did not have any alarms or alert mechanisms warning personnel of operational failures, which delayed problem response time.
Wescast Electrical Projects Coordinator, Ryan Pletch, commented, “we were seeing accuracies of ±40% using the system with the screw conveyors and it was forcing us to scrap parts and increase maintenance and production time.” Due to these issues the company chose to replace the metering system as one of the components of their renovation project.
Supplier Search
After a thorough search of feeding equipment manufacturers, Wescast narrowed their choice down to two prospective bulk solids metering equipment suppliers. Schenck AccuRate, located in Whitewater, Wisconsin, was one of the two remaining manufacturers Wescast wanted to get to know better.
Schenck AccuRate, sent their local representative, Firing Industries, to meet with the company and get an understanding of their needs. Based on conversations with Wescast engineering personnel, Firing brought in and demonstrated the features of a MECHATRON® loss-in-weight feeder. During the presentation the Wescast employees were very impressed with the feeder’s ability to clean, disassemble, and reconfigure from the non-process side.
They saw how easy it would be to operate and perform routine maintenance on the feeder. Feeling they were getting close to resolving their material metering problem, Wescast scheduled a visit to the Schenck AccuRate test lab to confirm the feeder’s accuracies using their materials. The results of the testing proved the MECHATRON® to be the optimal feeding solution for this application. Because the feeder was able to meet the necessary accuracy and maintenance requirements Wescast made the decision to choose Schenck AccuRate as their supplier of feeding equipment, which resulted in the purchase of four MECHATRON® feeders and four DISOCONT® loss-in-weight controls.
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| MECHATRON® Feeding Fines |
Equipment Installation
Installation was accomplished with the assistance from a Schenck AccuRate commissioned service technician.
Pletch, commented, “having the technician onsite gave us the training we needed for operating, maintaining, and troubleshooting our new equipment." He also stated, “start-up was simplified by utilizing the Easy Serve software of the DISOCONT® control package, which made control set-up, calibration, and customization a straightforward process.”
The Process
The four MECHATRON® feeders and four DISOCONT® controls were installed near existing sand supply hoppers as part of two production lines in the newly renovated section of the sand mixing area. Each production line required two MECHATRON® feeders and one sand supply hopper.
One feeder metered the fines and the other a bentonite clay premix. The feeders with accuracies from ±1/4% to 3/4% meter the materials on to a belt conveyor along with sand coming from the sand supply hopper. Monitoring the feeders is accomplished through the DISOCONT® controls and a customer supplied HMI package that displays alarms, feed rates, material usage, and operating status.
All of the materials from the feeders and sand supply hopper are conveyed to a muller (mixer) where water is added through a separate control loop that is based on the conductivity of the sand. The sand and clay mix are then conveyed to the molding area where the materials are used to make molds, which molten metal is poured into for manufacturing the exhaust manifolds.
Results
The new building renovation, which included the two process lines with the MECHATRON® feeders, exceeded the company’s return on investment goal. All costs from the project were recovered in a little over one year.
According to John Cove, Mechanical Projects Engineer at Wescast, “the accuracies of the MECHATRON® feeders were critical in exceeding our ROI goal.” By replacing equipment that had accuracies of ±40% with the feeding systems supplied by Schenck AccuRate, Wescast has been able to reduce maintenance, work stoppages, and production errors.
Today, operating more efficiently with the feeding equipment supplied by Schenck AccuRate the company produces over 14 million cast exhaust manifolds annually to automotive manufacturers worldwide.
Schenck AccuRate is a global supplier of bulk solids metering equipment and systems including MECHATRON® Volumetric and Gravimetric Screw Feeders, DEA and DMO Weighfeeders, Multicor® and DLM Dry Material Flowmeters, SacMaster® Bulk Bag Discharging Systems, BEMP™ Belt Scales and SolidsFlow® Louvered Vibratory Feeders.
For additional information on Schenck AccuRate products, contact us at (800) 558-0184, by fax at (262) 473-2489 or visit our Web Site at www.accuratefeeders.com
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