Sprint DC Drives Increase Production At Steel Mill

Sprint Electric has supplied digital DC drives for the control system in a steel mill in Turkey, which has resulted in improved output, reduced waste and less down time. Kocaer Haddecilik is a producer of profiled steel products including T-bars, square bars, flat bars and custom window profiles. Kocaer needed to increase the production capacity of its facility based in Aliaga, Izmir. The company contracted VIB Otomasyon, a Turkish company specialising in automation and drives solutions, and its system integration partner Teori Elektrik.

Using a Scada system, complete with Profibus, Ethernet and fibre-optic networking, Kocaer Haddecilik was able to improve the steel mill's output, reduce waste and minimise down time. The complete facility from furnace, to shears, to packaging is now controlled using three operator stations and one engineering station. How the steel is formed and cut by the mills and shears is an important part of the process. The workloads involved require DC motors and drives.

VIB Otomasyon needed compact DC drives that could be integrated into the overall control system. The company selected Sprint Electric's range of PLX digital DC drives. The PLX has a suite of software application blocks included as standard. The built-in range of macros is able to control the three important process stages. Cascade control is used to control the tension of the steel between two mills.

The PLC automation system allows the operator to control the tension between any two mills, without affecting the rest of the line. This is done using fast calculation of reference speeds, the fast response of the PLX DC drives and the feedback supplied by the 1,000 line encoders. The PLX is also used for loop control; by changing motor speeds, the DC drive can maintain zero tension in the steel. To control the flying shear accurately, the PLX's spindle orientation block is used. The built-in software enables quick acceleration, good repeatability and a precise stop position.

The 5cm difference between minimum and maximum product lengths means Kocaer Haddecilik can accurately cut steel depending on customer requirements. With the improvements made in its new rolling mill process line, Kocaer Haddecilik expects to double its production capacity. Besides the metal processing industry, PLX DC drives from Sprint Electric can be used in many other applications including the pulp and paper industry, rubber and plastic processing, lifting equipment, food processing, pharmaceutical and chemical manufacturing.

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