FEATURE DRIVES, CONTROLS & TRANSMISSIONS
STEELMAKER IMPROVES roller table reliability with AC drives
With 80 rollers to transport finished steel billets a manufacturer has retrofitted four VSDs from ABB to control motors in a bid to avoid disruption and minimise downtime
A
steel maker is improving the reliability of its roller table by retrofitting four ABB variable speed drives (VSDs). The roller table has 80 rollers to transport finished steel billets at Celsa Manufacturing’s plant in Cardiff. Each drive controls four banks of 20 roller motors. Celsa’s existing roller table drives were obsolete.
“The drives could not be interrogated to
discover what they are doing or what condition they are in,” explains electrical engineer Nicholas Drane. “It was getting difficult to source spares for them. We had tried using another manufacturer’s drives to replace them but these needed extra components such as RC filters and braking resistors and we never managed to make them work in the way we wanted. This lead to a lot of lost production which as a 24/7 operation we cannot afford.” Celsa had previously worked with ABB authorised value provider APDS and already uses ABB’s DC drives on site. As a trial APDS installed an ABB general purpose drive ACS550. “We were keen to know that the
solution worked before we made major changes to the cabling,” says Drane. “APDS installed a drive as a temporary measure. Once we were satisfied the permanent drive was installed over the shutdown period to avoid disruption.” “Although not our main objective we estimate that Celsa will be saving in the
region of 30% on its energy costs for this drive,” says Doug Pitt of APDS. “All the motors are connected to the drive using scalar control. Some drives do not like the inductance imbalance that goes with trying to control so many motors but with the ABB drive we simply size it for 20 motors and there is no need for a filter.”
INCREASED EFFICIENCY The 125 A ABB drive used for the application incorporates a swinging choke
REPAIRED INDUSTRIAL GEARBOXES AS GOOD AS NEW
Renold Gears has the expertise, equipment and latest technology to provide a high quality, reliable and rapid industrial gearbox repair service. This would typically include improvements in performance, efficiency and possibly even reduced future maintenance. When you consider the cost savings involved in
repairing an industrial gearbox rather than replacing it with a completely new one (very often up to 40% less) it's often worth considering. However, when a new unit is required Renold's engineers conduct a site survey to ensure it will fit exactly into the footprint and space envelope of the previous, regardless of the original manufacturer. Replacement worm gears can be manufactured
from original drawings or by employing Renold's method of reverse engineering by taking a profile
22 OCTOBER 2015 | FACTORY EQUIPMENT
from a worm shaft on site anywhere in the world using a profile plug lifting technique. Renold is able to repair any gearbox made by any manufacturer to its original specifications or higher. The service department will ensure that Renold, Croft and Holroyd worm gear units are rebuilt using genuine components from the original manufacturer. When a complete overhaul is necessary electron
beam welding can be used on the wormwheel for extra security on highly stressed applications. An industrial gearbox repaired by Renold leaves the factory with a 12-month warranty and the level of quality assurance you'd expect from a gearbox repaired by a manufacturer.
www.renold.com
Celsa Manufacturing improves roller table reliability with ABB VSDs
to reduce the effects of harmonics; ABB flux optimisation makes it more efficient than the previous drive. “Having tried another drive with little success the customer had doubts about the solution,” says Pitt. “We were happy to prove the drive at our cost and it worked first time.”
MONITOR ENERGY USE “The ABB drive does the same job but in a more compact package with fewer components,” says Drane. “We bought a spare drive so if we do need to replace it we can do so quickly without delay. It is far more user-friendly. We can interrogate the drive via DriveWindow Light; if anything goes wrong we can download the data files to the drive to get it back to the original parameter settings. Although we have not yet performed any data logging we know the drive can do this and are very keen to use this feature to monitor our energy use.” The ABB drive is the first of four planned for the roller bed with every shutdown seeing another added.
ABB
T: 01925 741 111
www.abb.co.uk/energy
/ FACTORYEQUIPMENT
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