Product category:
Industrial Drives/Controls
News Release from: Danfoss Motion Controls | Subject: FC302 Automation Drive
Edited by the Engineeringtalk Editorial
Team on 07 March 2006
Drive keeps peas flowing
Drive controlled by safety relay eliminates the need for individual output contactors, saving cost and panel space on high speed pea canning line.
When Premier International Foods of Long Sutton installed a high speed pea canning line, for the drives it turned to the Danfoss FC302 Automation Drive, because of the safe-stop function and its compatibility with the Pilz PNoz safety relays The line, which can handle up to 40,000 cans of peas per hour, consists of three sections
A variable-speed drive controlled rope conveyor feeds cans to the in-feed section where a labeller applies the labels to the cans and passes them on to a Zambelli packaging machine which packs the cans in cartons.
The case conveyor then transports the full cases to the palletiser.
With 18 1.1 and 2.2kW drives running the three sections, safe co-ordinated control of the drives is essential, particularly if the drives in one section need to be isolated together to carry out work on that section.
The conventional method would be to remove power from the incoming side of each inverter or even to isolate each motor with individual output contactors.
The Automation Drive controlled by the Pilz PNoz safety relay eliminates the need for these contactors and saves cost and panel space.
Previously, hard-wired safety circuits were the norm as electronic devices were not deemed to be fail-safe.
Regulations support the adoption of the fail-safe safe-stop feature and this simplifies the power circuit design.
The overall strategy is further simplified and the security enhanced by control via the safety relays.
The control panels were designed and built by Empower Control Systems of Wisbech.
According to Jason Kierman, Empower's electrical engineer, the safe-stop function and its Pilz compatibility along with the ease of configuration were major considerations in selecting the FC302 for the project.
Past experience with Danfoss VLT 2800 and VLT 5000 series drives convinced Kierman that the FC302 would be a safe bet.
He said: "I'm pleased to see that Danfoss have continued its tradition of ensuring the interface is simple to use".
"I found installation and commissioning the drives totally straightforward".
Mark Blackburn, Premier's Project Manager, said: "The whole line is controlled over a Devicenet Fieldbus via an A-B SLC5 PLC and we needed a Devicenet compatible drive".
"Another area of criticality was the ability of the inverters to handle extremely long cable runs to the motors, up to 150m, and they had to be compact since panel space was at a premium".
"The FC302 allows us to mount the drives very tightly side by side and still retain 20% spare capacity in the panels for the future".
"The fact that the drive is at the beginning of its production life cycle is a bonus, allowing us to adopt it across this and other projects for years to come".
"Past experience with Danfoss drives convinced us that specifying the new drives wasn't a risk and this view has been justified by operational experience".
"The pea season is very short so canning line reliability is crucial".
"In fact, in terms of up-time and productivity, this line has broken all previous records since it went into production".
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