LCA Automation in Affoltern am Albis, Switzerland is a special purpose machine manufacturer with many years of experience in manufacturing equipment for the automotive industry. One of LCA’s core production areas is steering components, which it supplies to almost all of Europe’s vehicle manufacturers. Rainer Pölzl, who is responsible for project planning and control engineering, explains that LCA delivers turnkey assembly systems, from planning and development through to construction and commissioning. This includes mechanical construction, as well as electronics, control technology and software. “A good example is the current assembly line for the sliding connection of a steering column, which has to work efficiently while maintaining a high level of accuracy,” he says.
PC Control offers scalability and openness
LCA Automation has benefitted from Beckhoff’s PC-based control technology since 2000. “There were good reasons for choosing Beckhoff,” continues Pölzl. “These included the broad, scalable and open product range, the high performance of the industrial PC (IPC) technology and, above all, the company’s ability to innovate continuously. PC Control offered a highly flexible and integrated system of coordinated software and hardware, right down to the I/O level. The technology also offered significant advantages in terms of horizontal and vertical integration, as the openness of the system facilitated the integration of our machines into interlinked assembly lines at the customers, as well as communication with their MES and ERP systems.”
Due to the high complexity of the proprietary axis and process control system, the only way forward was a gradual migration towards a full PC Control solution. Pölzl explains that the openness of PC Control allowed LCA to run it initially in parallel with its own motion and process control, which it was then able to integrate via Profibus quite easily.
Complex assembly lines
The steering shaft assembly line uses PC Control throughout. The finely scalable, modular design of PC-based control and the resulting high degree of flexibility in the application allowed the company to implement the whole steering shaft assembly line in just eight months. The line features three manual feed stations, where the individual components are placed in the workpiece carriers of the automated transport system. The carriers then pass through the individual processing stations. At one of the stations, the tubular raw material is pressed and shaped. Before it is connected with other components it is greased and oiled. At each processing station, checks are carried out for dimensional accuracy and function. For example, the presence of all the required parts is verified, as is the compliance with specified forces in joining processes. This results in very reliable part quality assurance and reject identification.
A complex final examination takes place in a measuring station that represents the most important part of the LCA expertise. Pölzl explains, “On the one hand vehicle steering components must be backlash-free, but on the other the connections must not be too tight to prevent telescoping in the event of an accident.”
The current steering shaft assembly line uses four C6930 control cabinet IPCs with 2,53 GHz IntelR Core 2 Duo processors, each connected to a 38 cm CP7902 control panel. The complex process comprises more than 1000 I/Os, which are implemented locally via IP67-rated EtherCAT Box modules. Other components include 18 servo axes, which are composed of AX5000 servo drives and AM3000 servomotors and controlled via TwinCAT NCI. EtherCAT is used for high-performance networking, which blends perfectly into the PC Control system, “Thanks to the excellent system integration, TwinCAT enables optimum access to the data. As a result, subsequent extensions can be implemented much more easily than with third-party software,” Pölzl adds.
Opportunities for further innovation
For future projects he sees further innovation potential, thanks to PC-based control. “The main advantage for us is the use of C/C++ as a programming language because we have long-standing expertise with this and are able to implement complex function blocks. With C programming as an integral part of the process, it is possible to integrate these quickly and easily as encapsulated functions, for example for hydraulic axes that are synchronised with high precision,” he concludes.
For more information contact Kenneth McPherson, Beckhoff Automation, +27 (0)11 795 2898, [email protected], www.beckhoff.co.za
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| Email: | [email protected] |
| www: | www.beckhoff.com/en-za/ |
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