Challenge XL Mastered Anthon GmbH is a company with tradition. Founded in 1865 as Iron Foundry and Machine Factory for Forestry Equipment, the company in its early stages forced the extension of their range of products and the beginning of foreign business. 3D-Layout of new Evergreen Sanding- and Cut to Size Line
3D-Layout of the Fork Stacking-Station The trade name Anthon has become a synonym for solid mechanical engineering and the products convince by high quality and innovative technology until today. With in-house software-solutions, Anthon also takes account of the increasing demands. Evergreen is one of the worldwide leading manufacturers of high-quality medium density fiberboard (MDF) and particleboard with an annual output of more than 1.3 million m³. The company from Malaysia began its business in 1972 as timber trade- and veneer manufacturer. The company is focused on improving the utilization of resources and therefore applies advanced technology. The range of products also contains flat-pack furniture, the so-called Ever-Lite-Furniture. This series is completely made of Evergreen quality panels and is very popular because of its lightweight and easy transportability. By using an innovative merging technology, which allows a combination of MDF-boards with particleboards, the Company has achieved savings of material costs and timber content for these furniture products. The Challenge was enormous The partnership was established with regard to a very demanding task, where large panel stacks had to be delivered to a new Anthon sanding- and cut to size line. The required processing steps, but particularly the extremely limited space increased the complexity of this task even more. The Sales manager Bernd Jochims recognized very soon that here, with a standard solution, the requested result could not be achieved, and so an individual concept was developed, integrating the ideas and conceptions of Evergreen. The excellent implementation of our ideas in the concept of the line was a decisive factor for placing the order with Company Anthon, stated Kuo Jen Chiu, Executive Director at Evergreen Panel Sizing Technology Fiberboard. From the beginning it was always attempted, to implement our ideas in the design. Commonly a solution was found, which will position us well technically and commercially for the next years, so Chiu stated further. Adapting the definition of the project into the already existing constructional specifications and hereby considering the drawn up specification 100%, was a Masterstroke. A standard line here would not have been of much use for us., so Chui s conclusion.
Designers overtrump each other The special solution now looks as follows: The raw panels to be cut to size come from a stack storage to the feeding system of the sanding machine. The feeding system is designed such that continuous sanding with 120 m/min is ensured. It is therefore equipped with an intermediate buffer system, which takes over the rest stacks. So the feeding of the sanding machine is maintained, while at the same time a new stack can run in and be positioned correspondingly. This new designed intermediate buffer device makes sanding loss by a stack change a matter of the past. Arriving panel stacks can be with or without base- and coverboard. The disposal is taken over by a separate vacuum destacking system, which removes base-and coverboards from the line and destacks them accurately. Following to the sanding machine there is the surface inspection station. It allows automatic identification of B-panels. They will not be fed to the saw, but will be removed from the production process over separate drop-box destacking system. The B-panels can be removed with a forklift truck or be fed into the line again later for a cut to size process. The station for the book forming is integrated online. It allows book forming for the book saw without reducing the sanding speed. The saw itself is designed as book saw with a cut height of 180 mm. The rip cut saw has a cut length of 6.500 mm, the crosscut saw 2.700 mm. Behind the cut to size there is a fork destacking station. It is equipped with three destacking places, in order to make the corresponding sorting of the cut to size images. Of course, each place is equipped with an automatic base- and coverboard-handling system, so that these can be supplied according to the destacking instructions. Next, the stacks can be removed by a forklift truck or be supplied to the automatic strapping line. It allows foil wrapping and also cross- and longitudinal strapping. The automatic packing line implements all known packing instructions. The core: The Control The control of the line is by means of a Siemens Simatic S7-1516. With it all in- and outputs of the line, like sensors, valves and drives are linked. The advantages obviously are performance, storage size and data safety-function. The HMI is realized with a Comfort panel. It allows the operator influencing and controlling all parameters of the line and moving each individual drive manually. The control can be maintained over remote VPN-access. So the service engineers of Anthon have comprehensive access to the control and are able to analyze causes of faults quickly and at best remedy them. This ensures minimum downtimes for the customer. Because of the modular system, in the future, there will be manifold options for extensions and optimizations. The integrated security-mechanisms further ensure an optimum protection against undesired access and manipulation. Stack transport with stack weight up to 25,000 kg fast feeding of single panels, so that the required feed speed of the sanding machine of 120 m/min can be ensured. At a smallest panel length of 5,000 mm this makes 24 cycles per minute Customer specific design concerning function, sequence and product variety. Very compact, space saving design with optimum position of zero edges for high saw capacity New designed extraction system for nearly dust-free panel sizing New Siemens Simatic S7-1516 control Automatic detection of different surface qualities with connected panel sorting system Continuous book forming for the saw connected online, which allows maintaining the sanding belt speed of 120 m/min Fully automatic strapping line with stack-foil wrapping, cross- and longitudinal strapping The tasks of the Master computer in detail: Communication process control system Communication storage Communication with the PLC, Control of line Taking over of optimized cut patterns over the processing control system Saving of cut patterns
Editing of cut patterns Processing and interpreting of cut pattern Position calculation for the cut production Tracking of parts within the line Administration of data records with properties of each part Manipulation options for parts on the line Graphic display of line overview with the dynamic part assignments of individual stations Cut pattern treatment by the Anthon program editor Cut pattern processing by the processing interpreter Visualization of parts on the stations as machine image by the Anthon browser Display of packing instructions, which have to be realized by the operator during destacking (Graphic and text) Innovative Software-solution completing the whole The master computer has the task, to establish connections to the super ordinate systems, like master production system and to the storage, and to supply the line with the required parameters and processing steps. The software of the master computer has fully been developed in-house at Anthon and is available on operatingsystem platforms of Linux and Windows. Program editor and browser can be operated several times because of the complete implementation of the Server/Client-concept and on distributed computers also in parallel over VPN. So the assignment on the machine can also be observed remotely. In the program editor of Anthon, cut plans are created, controlled and edited. In standard case, the cut plans are transferred automatically over the network to the line-pcs. Produced parts are feedback to the master production system for booking and stack labels are printed. The interfaces to the master production system and to the storage system are designed as database interfaces. This project imposed the greatest requirement on the cut optimization. Therefore Anthon resorted to the longtime partner PSL and their optimization program Secant. The focus was not only on the optimum utilization of material, but also on the cooperation between master production systems, storage and saw. Standard tasks like the calculation of cut patterns, cut times, waste- and graphic output of cut patterns were revised. Latest Simatic S7-1500 controller generation (Picture: Siemens AG)
The HMI is realized by a comfort panel (Picture: Siemens AG) Automatic Cut optimization A particular feature of the cut optimization is the automatic and the practically automatic handling. Therefore the so-called Silent Mode was implemented, where the cut optimization is running in the background. Production orders are generated from the master production system and sent to the program. This does optimize the production orders with three different settings and sends three proposals back to the master system. At the three variants, the focus is either put on the cut time, material utilization or on a balance of both. The production planner selects the best processing mode in his opinion and enables it for the saw. Except for the pre-definition of the settings the production planner does not have to make further efforts concerning optimization and so can react quickly on the production orders and can plan the plans accordingly. We have delivered the line to Evergreen at the end of last year after a complete commissioning in Flensburg. After the installation and startup phase it will be fully operational at begin of the processing chain in the process sequence of Evergreen from summer 2015 on. Also in the future Anthon will further be listening to the customer needs, in order to be able to deliver further lines generated commonly with the customers in 2015, the year of the 150th Anniversary., Sales Manager Bernd Jochims sums up finally.