Metal Products Manufacturing Category: Zenith Awards Finalists
Company: Temperzone & Maxitec
Project: Conversion to ‘lights out’ completely automated manufacturing
Company: Xstrata Copper
Project: ESP Dust Recovery Plant
Company: Maxitec
Project: Turning 9 Hours Of Fabrication Into 20 Minutes
Company: The Profibus International Competence Centre
Project: Wang Components
Company: Temperzone & Maxitec
Project: Conversion to ‘lights out’ completely automated manufacturing
Location: Sydney, New South Wales
Temperzone is in the initial phase of a multi-stage technology upgrade, by consolidating the company’s growth strategy on automated Finn-Power technology.
This Finn-Power setup, with the innovative Night Train FMS automated handling system soon to be at the hub and Maxitec technical support will ensure Temperzone processing sheet metal in more economical coiled form rather than individual sheets, with the option of running a 24/7 operation at will.
The entire upgrade process is being conducted in stages. At the moment, Temperzone is adding a Finn-Power Shear Brilliance to its existing Finn-Power Shear Genius to further speed up the plant.
At the same time, Finn-Power (through its Australian distributor Maxitec) has provided a complete blueprint for the layout of where a Night Train FMS system would fit in for a complete, 24/7 unmanned sheetmetal operation.
The integration of all these technologies will allow Temperzone to buy the coiled steel, put that on Night Train which feeds into all the punching, cutting and folding machines and at the end of the line leave finished components ready for assembly (into air conditioning units) with no manual handling.
Company: Xstrata Copper
Project: ESP Dust Recovery Plant
Location: Mount Isa, Queensland
The project objective was to eliminate the environmental and hygiene liability, as well as providing mechanism to unlock the significant value of an otherwise unattainable smelter by-product stream.
Electrostatic precipitator (ESP) dust is formed as a by product of the Copper Smelting process.
It is collected from the smelter gas stream in an Electrostatic Precipitator, where process water is added and the dust is either processed through the newly commissioned ESP Acid Leach Plant or it is diverted to stockpile.
The solution was to implement a suitable processing method to deal with two sources of dust; the new arising generated during live smelter operations and from the historic stockpile.
For a leaching process to be effective extremely tight control of pH is required to ensure that the values add base metals are recovered and that the other materials are separated, stabilised and disposed of correctly.
The process is primarily to discard unwanted minor elements (e.g. As, Fe, Ca, Mg) and to recover the value add copper and gold contained within the ESP dust.
Since the commissioning of the ESP leach and Agi-truck processes there has been a copper recovery of up to 98 per cent.
Company: Maxitec
Project: Turning 9 Hours Of Fabrication Into 20 Minutes
Location: Western Australia
Maxitec assisted a metal punch/press company which has been servicing metal fabrication and short run metal stamping needs of Western Australia and other states for over 20 years.
The company stamps parts from various metals including mild steel, stainless steel, aluminium, brass and copper. It also manufactures and carries a stock range of motor body builders hardware, trailer components and fencing components.
This specific job involves manufacturing a stainless-steel washer which had to be stripped through a guillotine, a central hole punched, followed by blanking the outside.
Maxitec evaluated that all these processes could be performed by the one machine, hence eliminating triple handling to save time, improving the quality of the finished product, and making the OH&S aspect of production even better.
Since implementing the machine the company has changed nine hours operation time down to 20 minutes.
Job processes are designed in JetCam software so that this job process, stored in the program’s memory and recalled each time it is needed.
Company: The Profibus International Competence Centre
Project: Wang Components
Location: Wangaratta, Victoria
The project involves Wang Components developing and implementing a plasma fusion process to weld thick materials. The company is primarily involved in the water pumping and irrigation business and started manufacturing its own brand of pipeline fittings.
Over the past few years, Wang Components has been able to use the features and flexibility of Profibus to implement an automation plan.
With the assistance of Profibus International Competence Centre (PICC) the company cut down its production time and reduced its downtime.
PICC did an audit of the Profibus installation at Wang Components. The audit used ProfiTrace 2 analyser, which combines all primary tools in one: Analsyer, Oscilloscope, Bar graph, Topology Scan and DP-V0/V1 Master.
With the implementation, the company has been able to share its resources on the shop floor, such as welding power sources to suit production requirements.
The Profibus setup exchanges larges amounts of data required for MIG and TIG welding as well as plasma fusion welding platforms concurrently with multi-axis servos.