PROJECT OF THE MONTH | MAY 2022
R The Morgan Automation crane operating in the Autonomous Coil Yard (ACY) at Big River Steel.
protocols, reduced energy costs by eliminating lift truck handling and reducing physical distancing of coils, plus faster location of the coils on their saddles for crane handling into the shipment staging areas. Critical overall was the safety of the personnel, so a system of nine remote I/O cabinets and 21 safety gates were implemented. Integration of the entire operation was handled by the proprietary Morgan CEPHAS logistic management system handled by mill personnel via a virtual private network (VPN). “We were bringing our established
CEPHAS warehouse management system to this challenge and seeking to marry it to a single user interface, driven by the rules established by our customer, so there’s essentially a single bucket of data on each coil. In that “bucket” are all the physical characteristics and temperature of the coil plus the determined location for placement. All this data is transmitted through a series of Siemens Sinamics drive modules, Simatic PLCs and the Sinema network monitoring server, complemented by WinCC V16 supervisory control for monitoring over long distances. In addition, Siemens offered its Scalance wireless suite of ethernet switches and access points to communicate the ring topology and
VLAN data to the mill control room personnel,” said Sharamitaro. Sharamitaro said Morgan tested the components beyond their published ratings, so his team knew they would perform in this application, especially at the moment when the crane would pick up a hot coil and hoist it up near the trolley with the controls onboard. As each coil is grabbed, a full battery
of sensors, switches, I/O power supply, drives, PLCs and wireless communication sends information from the crane trolley directly to the control house. The three 190 ton cranes are fully synchronized for handling the incoming coils from the hot mill plus the placement of the coils in the transfer cars and staging lines. The information feeds the CEPHAS
system of Morgan Automation, which makes the algorithmic determinations for each coil, based on predetermined parameters set by the mill. Leading the project for Siemens were
Roland Najbar, business development manager, and Rick Ludlow, account manager, both focused in the crane industry. “Once we had the full requirements from Morgan, we went to work assembling our motion control and material handling product and software suites to accommodate them. The need for fully unattended operation
and wireless communication in the mill presented some challenges, but our team responded with a combination of time-tested drive, wireless and PLC products as well as some newer offerings such as the Sinema network monitoring system,” said Najbar. Another key component in the Siemens solution was the Sinamics S120 Smart Line Module for crane applications, which features onboard regenerative drive. This feature takes the excess motor power from a crane hoist, for example, during descent and feeds it to another component in the system or back to the grid for trackable energy savings to the customer. ●
R A Morgan technician programs the PLC.
www.hoistmagazine.com | May 2022 | 11
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