The UK’s largest manufacturer of high-quality steel products required a bespoke solution at one of their steel mills. This particular production facility receives the raw material for steel manufacture and manages the process of converting those materials into steel components. The plant supplies a number of industries and particularly for rail and construction.
The steel manufacturers needed a method of ensuring that their ‘rolling lines’, which would contain and transport the produced steel structural sections, would continually move at the required speed and frequency to allow the plant to continuously produce and move their products.
The main issue for the customer, was that the rolling lines could often move at a disproportionate speed to the speed that the structural steel sections were being produced, leading to a number of line breakdowns or ‘pile-ups’ of steel product.
Crane Electronics were approached to propose a potential solution that would measure the torque applied by the conveyor lines, to ensure that they moved at the required pace and speed as steel beams were being produced. The level of torque being measured in the rolling conveyors would then be converted into a line speed control system.
Over a period of time working alongside the customer, Crane Electronics devised a new plan to install bespoke torque transducers at a series of intervals along the conveyor belt, that would measure the torque and load being applied, to communicate and then manage the speed at which the belt moved and transported the steel products, in relation to the speed that it was being produced and moved on to the conveyor belt.
The new torque measurement system allowed the steel plant to properly supervise their steel production and movement around the plant.
The results delivered by the new torque transducer system, meant that the customers had fewer occurrences of downtime caused by mismatched conveyor speeds and steel beam ‘pile-ups. It also gave the customer increased control over the output of product they created.
In addition, the torque transducers also allowed site engineers to be notified of any potential issues with the conveyor belt such as stoppages or unexpected rises or falls in speed at certain points measured by the multiple transducers.
The positive results gained by the bespoke torque monitoring system left the customer feeling incredibly satisfied and impressed with the bespoke approach that we were able to provide for their unique challenge and situation.
David Kelly, part of the team at Crane Electronics who worked closely with the customer commented;
“At Crane we always strive to deliver a complete solution that fulfils all of the customers often unique challenges.
We have a wide-range of experience and knowledge in many different industries and we were delighted to be able to offer a complete solution at the steelworks, one that went above and beyond the expectations of what the customer required.
This solution was ideal as we were able to help the customer not only save time and money due to downtime caused by the previous system, but we also helped improve their overall control of the process which they hadn’t expected to be able to do.”
For more information about how we can provide a solution for your business, call us on +44 (0)1455 25 14 88, email us at sales@crane-electronics.com.