Weingarten Forging Press Upgrade for Aerospace Industry
The Challenge: A series of 20 year-old Weingarten
forging presses used for manufacturing titanium jet airfoils in
a large aircraft manufacturing facility were becoming unreliable due
a combination of intense operation and the age of the technology.
The presses required control of energy transfer to the ram to
reduce mechanical shock and eliminate part tolerance inconsistencies. – all within a
200ms press operating cycle.
The Solution: An obvious solution was to
rewind the unconventional screw press motors and to implement a flux
vector drive system, but at enormous cost. Brock’s solution incorporated a
simple 800 amp, current controlled soft-starter in combination with a
SAFphire programmable linear controller (SAFphire Link). A generic current
profile similar to the original current profile-versus-position was used
as the base, the latter being obtained from blow tests done on the press.
A scale and offset value was applied to this profile, depending on the
velocity required. This current profile was then used as a feed-forward
reference to the OPAL, which provided the regulated control of the
acceleration of the ram over and above its fixed gravitational
acceleration based on height.
In addition, an operator workstation human-machine
interface (HMI) was designed with set-up screens, recipe management for a
series of products, motor and lubrication monitoring and control, data
trending for motor current, speed, position etc., detailed alarm screens,
as well as a screen that performed complex calculations for determining
the proper die kiss plates required.
To facilitate full integration of the new system with the
existing equipment, special provisions were made to communicate to a GE
PLC, GE Fanuc robot, and an Oracle database for transferring relevant
data, integration to oven heat controllers, an oven turntable, die
heaters, and lubrication system. As the first phase of the project, Brock
provided a detailed Functional Specification to outline both the hardware
and software features as well as functionality proposed for the design.
Brock’s Offsite Acceptance Test (OAT) using an I/O simulated environment
ensured the software was fully written and tested before site trials. In
addition, the OAT allowed the operators to experience a preview of the
design and its expected functionality.
The Results:
- Energy savings due to reduction of power consumption and control over ram energy
- Reduced mechanical stress to the press resulting in less downtime and reduced maintenance costs
- A series of tests illustrated a significant increase in speed regulation and part tolerances
- Reduced scrap improved production costs
- Trouble free start-up with press running flawlessly from first try
- Multiple installations
7) Flexibility of initial design allowed the addition of Robot control in recent Brock upgrades. Robot integration resulted in even more throughput
