Category: Uncategorized

Epic designs and builds motion controls to control the torque of an AC motor driving buffer wheels using a servo controlled slide.
The customer wanted a way to compensate for the wear of the buffer wheels over time and have a constant buffing force. Buffer force is proportional to the rotational torque of the buffer wheels. The buffer torque feedback is fed into the Siemens 1214 PLC torque regulator. The buffer wheels are mounted on a slide which moves in and out to apply the correct force on the part held by the robot. If the buffer wheel torque is less than set point, the servo motor controlled slide moves in, if more than set point the slide moves away from part. As the buffer wheel wears down, the slide will compensate to keep same force on part. As the robot turns the part and the distance changes, the slide will keep constant force.

Buffer wheel force control video

Epic Engineering, LLC designs and builds a controls system to apply RTV sealant to a lithium battery POD. The manufacturer previously manually applied the RTV sealant which made the process slow and inconsistent. Epic used Intelligent Actuator Inc. Robo Cylinders to move the RTV head to the perfect profile path. This robot saved the manufacturer a lot of time, money, and much less waste. Please see video.

RTV Sealant Robot

Epic Engineering designs a PLC to automatically shut down parts of a customers process when power usage goes above a certain threshold.
A local brick and block manufacturer uses a lot of electric energy to produce bricks and concrete blocks. The manufacturer used to be on a A19 plan with PG&E where the demand was calculated by Kilowatts used and penalties for going into peak usage. They found that they rarely went over 500KW throughout the day. It was determined that if the process could be kept below the 500kw demand throughout the day, they would be able to move to a less expensive rate plan, A6.
Epic used a PLC connected to the P,G,&E power meter to accumulate kilowatt hours used. P,G,&E uses a 15 minute average to calculate real time demand so we replicated that average in the PLC. A warning and fault threshold are operator adjustable on one of the HMI touchscreen screens. A yellow light will flash when the 15 minute KWH exceeds the warning threshold. If the 15 minute average exceeds the fault threshold, a relay will open and stop a predetermined process line. This will reduce the KWH load to get the 15 minute average down below the fault threshold.
It is estimated that the manufacturer is saving about $70,000 per year. The project paid for itself in less then one year.

ndusoft was used to integrate a Genmark Robot with a Omron PLC controlled laser for wafer etching. The Genmark robot used a serial port for communication to the Indusoft PC HMI. The Omron PLC controlled laser used Ethernet for communication to the Indusoft PC HMI. VB Scripting was used in Indusoft to control sequencing between robot and laser. This is a temporarily set up and will be controlled with hardwire I/O point in the future.

This past week my customer was having issues with their spud winch #1 intermittently faulting out. We agreed to have conference call at 8am eastern time which was 5am California time. At this point, the drive was tripping out consistently which is what you want when troubleshooting. The large GE drive was indicating speed tracking error. This indicated a speed feedback problem. I had them try to run it while I monitored the drive speed feedback. There was no feedback at all even though the motor rotated several rotations before tripping out. I had my trusty electrician in New York measure the encoder supply voltage at the motor. He measured zero, not good. The encoder cable back to the drive is not a straight shot. The AC drive is actually shared between two motors, spud winch and an anchor winch motor. The feedback gets switched by a relay. I suspected the relay was bad, but it was okay. While on the phone talking to the electrician in New York I had him look for loose wires and he indeed found one. He tightened it up and the cranes spud winch was back in business.

Unwinder going too fast

Recently I had a customer who said the unwind section on their printing press was going too fast. In fact, they had no control at all. When the section was started, the motor would try to go full speed. The maintenance person told me he tried adjusting various settings on the drive with no effect. I went to the plant to see what was going on. The DC field on the motor was okay, it had field current. Then we discovered there was a DC tachometer on the motor used for speed feedback to the drive. It would make sense if the tachometer wasn’t providing feedback, then the drive would try to go 100% on . I hooked up my voltmeter to the DC tachometer output and we turned the unwinder by hand, no voltage on my meter. We thought we might have a bad tachometer so we looked at the brushes on the tachometer and they looked fine. We then noticed we could turn the shaft of the tachometer independent of the motor. That’s it, we had a loose tachometer coupling. We opened it up and found more than a loose coupling, we had a completely disintegrated coupling. See picture. To make sure the tachometer was good we turned the shaft by hand and measured the voltage output. We replaced the coupling and started the line up without issues.

Recently I had a customer who said the unwind section on their printing press was going too fast.

This past week my customer was having issues with their spud winch #1 intermittently faulting out.

Epic Engineering, LLC designs and builds a controls system to apply RTV sealant to a lithium battery POD.