Honing in on New Money
Sunnen uses Motion Control to design a low-cost honing system.
Designing new product lines in the complex industrial automation world is a complex challenge, one that’s increasingly being done under tight time pressures. When Sunnen began developing a basic, large-bore horizontal honing system, it got to market on time with the right end pricing by reaching out to suppliers.
The new bore sizing and finishing line, dubbed the HTA, is now helping the 85-year-old OEM gain market share even during the lengthy economic slump. The genesis of the HTA began when executives decided to expand Sunnen’s platform of high production, high precision bore sizing and finishing systems to include maintenance and repair operations honing.
The company’s bore sizing and finishing systems have traditionally been customized, high-end designs. Once the design team focused on a more standardized line aimed at a new market segment opportunity, their main challenge was to trim system cost to a level the market would pay.
“When we went into this, the costs were not in line with the envisioned spec,” says Carl Mik, Product Design Engineer. “The stroker would be an AC motor and the spindle would be an AC motor. We wanted some sort of encoder on the AC motor for the stroker to hold relative position; and then we wanted a touch screen display. The costs were becoming prohibitive.”
Pricing was only one factor facing the design team. Beyond that lay a longer-term problem: how to evolve the company’s technology platform without sacrificing its competitive advantages in systems design, manufacturing and service efficiency.
Sunnen enhanced its engineering capabilities by tapping the broad expertise of its key suppliers. An early breakthrough came when Sunnen learned that Siemens could offer a basic performance servomotor with resolver feedback for the price of an AC motor. Sunnen already uses Siemens gear including a multi-axis high-performance Sinamics S120 drive line and Simatic automation platform. Profibus is also a key part of Sunnen’s KGM product line and SV vertical honing machines.
The HTA design had a short development cycle, and a few key issues in the beginning needed a quick resolution. “I put a prototype system together and the biggest issue I found was spindle response time, due to delays in signals between the display, PLC, and a servo and general purpose drive. We had 300 milliseconds altogether, which may be acceptable from the standpoint of introducing a basic system at a basic system cost, but it was unacceptable for our application,” Mik says.
In January, with a June production date looming closer, Mik got a big break. “Siemens told me that they had this new Sinamics S110 basic performance servo drive coming out, along with their new MP177 six-inch touch display, which allows soft PLC capability with the WinAC MP software. The direct connection between Sinamics S110 servo drive and MP177 display over Profibus made the system very cost effective and responsive,” he says.
That reduced component counts and let the designers use a single platform, which let them use the same Step 7 software used to program Sunnen’s S7 automation on other machines. The system, which was completed within the tight time requirements, exceeded its original goals.
“We have a color TFT display and spindle response time is down in the 25-millisecond range, instead of 300. The new system is achieving under 15/1,000 of an inch. For such a low-cost machine, I cannot believe we have such a capable system,” Mik says.
He also notes that the line achieves a new level of simplicity for this basic machine. That’s partially because the Drive-Cliq cable between the Sinamics S110 drive and motor provides automatic configuration. Additionally, the MP177 with WinAC software made the configuration and communication simple and straightforward.
The two companies are already talking about performance improvements for Sunnen’s next generation of high-end PC-based systems with integrated safety functions. “Siemens is coming out with motion control ideas that fit what we want to do,” Nikrant says. “For our high-end PC line, we are trying to come up with a common circuit for multiple machines. Siemens drives, bus structures and components fit really well in that respect because of the way some of the logic can be split up as far as the controllers go.
He says he’s planning to stick with Sinamics drives because they are easy to use and highly configurable. Additionally, the same piece of hardware can be used for multiple functions. Scalability is also a key factor as the lines expand.
“On systems where only basic functionality is required, a product like the Sinamics S110 servo system provides a simple and efficient solution. And control, programming and communication are all the same. The Siemens platform works well for us, for both the higher and entry level” Nikrant adds.
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