Coremaking
Interlinked equipment in coremaking facilities
Initial situation and remit
Our customer deploys two drying ovens in its coremaking facilities. They have different lengths so that drying times can be varied. Our conveying engineering was to divide the entire coremaking line into two interlinked lines. The task of both lines is to transport pallets together with the coated core assembly through the drying oven. Each interlinked line is assigned to one of the ovens.
Solution
The solution that we designed and implemented consists of roller conveyors, chain tracks, corner transfer units and turntables. During the course of production, the pallets are positioned at loading stations exact to 1/10 mm in space. Robots coat the dry-sand cores here and place them fully automatically onto the pallets. The pallets are taken by MSB's interlinked conveyor lines to the respective oven and removed again after the drying process. A robot at the end of both interlinked lines assembles the core segments to a complete core assembly, before they are transported on to the casting line. The transport pallets can subsequently be cleaned at a downstream brush cleaning station.
All robots on the interlinked lines communicate with the master operational data recording system. The information on what the pallet is carrying and on the status of the pallets is stored on RFID units on the pallets.
Design of the system
- The overall core production department is divided into two interlinked lines. The reason is that core segments are placed on pallets and transported through two drying ovens with different lengths = different drying times.
- Central point for assembling the dried core sub-assemblies.
- Coated cores are placed on the pallets exactly positioned in space by robots.
- Data are communicated between the robot and the master operational data recording system at the robot positioning stations. Information on what the pallets are carrying and on the status of the pallets is written on RFID units (which are attached to the pallets).
- Central stations as brush cleaning points to clean the transport pallets.