1st Quarter 2015Electrical switching & drive systems & components
Variations in the weight of filled sugar bags can be a big headache for a sugar mill. When bags are not filled to within a given tolerance, they are rejected; a high number of rejected bags lead to increased costs and lower productivity. Automation specialist, Festo worked with an Illovo sugar mill in KwaZulu-Natal to resolve this problem and reduce the number of rejected bags using the compact smart controller, CECC.
Filled sugar bags at Illovo are weighed for errors before being selected, depending on the weight error margin. Changes in product density are not uncommon, and these directly affect the filled masses from the volumetric filler. The machine operator would then have to adjust the filling machine manually.
The control system at Illovo needed an upgrade which Festo had already implemented using a CECC compact-PLC. “We then identified that the operator was still manually adjusting and compensating for errors,” says Festo Systems engineer, Nicolas Fleuriot. “We offered to use the same CECC together with better instruments to automate the error correction process, freeing the operator to do other tasks and increasing reliability. The CoDeSys PLC was combined with a load cell amplifier with communications via an I/O link. The result was a decreased number of rejects and increased productivity.
“Illovo is very pleased with the new system as there is now a significant decrease in rejected bags,” says Fleuriot. “This efficiency and increased productivity has led to the purchase of three more upgrades at the plant.”
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