Name: Automatic Chip Conveyor

The customer wanted to automatically remove scrap from the cutting operation without operator intervention.

Overview: Metal cutting machines such as lathes, drill presses, or milling machines produce huge amounts of metal cuttings that must be continuously removed from the work environment. By automatically removing the scrap, maintenance downtime would be reduced and productivity increased.

Application benefit: By integrating our advanced torque measurement process into the motor controller, automatic jam clearing was possible. If the torque measurement and controller were implemented in 2 separate products, the costs would be substantially higher and the torque measurement not easily achieved.

The customer's product: The customer's product is a large chip conveyor used for removing scrap material during the machining operation.

The customer's present solution: The customer's conveyors are fitted with manual controls for an operator to sequence the scrap material away from the cutting machine. Because the chips can jam the conveyor, the operator must repeatedly reverse the conveyor to clear the jams. This manual operation is labor intensive, takes away from production time, and increases the overall cost of the manufacturing cutting operation. The customer's request was to integrate an automatic jam clearing function into a rugged NEMA 4X, aluminum-enclosed, digital Variable Frequency Drive (VFD).

KB learned of the application problem by sales visits to the customer's facility. Based upon additional phone conferences between engineering departments, we were able to write a program that would simulate the sequence of operation. Once we received their motor, the KBDA was programmed to meet their performance specifications.

KB's capabilities for solving the problem: For the AFD, it's the KBDA series of digital keypad Adjustable Frequency Drive products. This series incorporates a powerful, second-generation, micro-controller that is programmable for custom OEM applications using software that has proprietary motor monitoring capabilities. KB's engineering staff has a reputation of working directly with customer applications to reach satisfactory solutions.

The KB solution: The objective was to eliminate the manual removal of metal chips and have the removal done automatically. The KBDA software was custom designed to run the conveyor until a jam occurred. Proprietary software algorithms were used to sense the jam at which time the sequencing logic automatically reversed the conveyor to try to clear the jam. If the conveyor continued to jam, the software would reverse the conveyor X times and then shut down. Only then would the operator have to clear the jam manually.

The results: Using the KBDA-24 digital AFD, chip removal was continuous in the automatic mode. All conveyor jams were cleared with the new software program with custom algorithms based on motor sequencing parameters.

Customer's strategic advantage: The customer got exactly what he wanted - no more, no less - while he enjoyed major performance enhancements, substantial productivity output, and a substantial competitive advantage.

A Win-Win solution for both the customer and KB.