Energy savings make conveyor investment an easy decision

Industrial Conveying (Aust) Pty Ltd (ICA), one of Australia’s leading conveyor companies, has recently completed a major factory refurbishment project involving a multinational manufacturer consolidating one of its Sydney plants using a comprehensive range of technology from SEW-Eurodrive.

ICA has been operating since the mid-70s across a wide range of industries, and specialises in customised projects designed and built to the client’s specific requirements. It specialises in materials handling, transporting raw materials, processed materials and finished products for a diverse range of manufacturing industries.

Bruce Granger, General Manager of ICA, says that, with the increasing cost of electricity, energy efficiency is becoming increasingly important for his clients and end users.

“Companies are now looking closely at what their energy consumption is, so anything they can do to reduce it is a huge advantage for them,” he said. The Sydney plant project, with all-new conveyor drive technology, has the potential to realise energy savings for the customer to the tune of thousands of dollars every year.

“It was not just energy savings we were able to offer the client, there were substantial savings in installation and wiring costs as well.

“While the project is in an existing building, it had been completely stripped and refurbished inside with new equipment from us and equipment from other plants,” said Granger.

The main part of the project is taking cartons from the plant’s manufacturing cells through an overhead conveyor system, then carrying the cartons down to a palletising system - with a total combined conveyor length of around 250 m.

The mechatronic drive system from SEW-Eurodrive comprises an efficient electric synchronous motor and gear unit with matching electronics in a single compact housing.

Granger said the system has several automated mergers where cartons from four different manufacturing cells travel on the overhead conveyor systems, after which they all merge onto one main trunk line which takes the cartons to the palletising system, where a sorting system sorts the cartons into various lanes.

Granger explained that the manufacturer has more than 30 SKUs with two main variations of cartons; one measuring 400 x 250 x 200 mm with the larger carton measuring 650 x 300 x 280 mm and weighing up to 20 kg.

“While the flow rate through the system is modest at the moment, the system has the ability to be increased when needed as production rates increase.

“We have designed the overhead conveyor system to accumulate via particular types of belts that we use, with the ability to turn the drives off and on as needed.

“Like most of our projects, we are using SEW-Eurodrive electrical equipment with various types of the Movigear mechatronic drive system, which is ideal for materials handling systems. Overall, we are using 56 SEW-Eurodrive motors on this project; the Movigear SNI, linked to Movifit field controllers, and Movigear DRCs.

“The Movifit system has allowed us to control up to ten of the Movigear drives from just one controller, which has significantly reduced our field wiring component and simplified the controls.

“It has also considerably cut our installation times by allowing us to do the prewiring of many of the components - such as the photoelectric cells - connecting them straight back to the Movigear units.

“By doing a lot of the pre-installation work and dry commissioning the system in our Bendigo factory, this gives us the considerable advantage of reduced on-site work.”

The efficiency and distributed control technology of the Movigear/Movifit system has been key to reducing the energy consumption. “Across the drives, we estimate the current draw will be as low as 20 A whereas if we had designed the project the conventional way the current draw would be much higher, possibly as high as 60 A, and cost the manufacturer considerably more to operate. Over the life of this equipment, there will be substantial savings in energy consumption; savings in the region of thousands of dollars every year,” he explained.

ICA did much of the pre-installation work in their Bendigo factory, which gave them an advantage of reduced on-site work.

While with this project energy consumption was a key element, reliability was also important to the manufacturer, as many of the conveyors are suspended overhead, so the drive system being compact and lightweight was an important factor. “With the plant presently operating two shifts, six days a week, reliability is paramount for the manufacturer who does not want any production downtime, and the reduced suspended weight was another advantage for us,” he said.

Granger said the main reason ICA uses SEW-Eurodrive equipment is the high quality of all the equipment.

“It is very reliable and efficient, plus we get excellent service and backup. It’s the whole package. In fact, SEW-Eurodrive is our preferred supplier - the only time we use other motors and drives is when, for some reason or other, the client dictates we use another brand, often to match other motors in the plant.

“In the over 30 years or so I have been dealing with SEW-Eurodrive, I could count on one hand the issues I may have had with their drives over that period of time.

“SEW’s equipment is highly reliable, the company’s service and backup is the best bar none, that plus innovation are just some of the reasons we keep going back to them. This project, with its 56-motor system, is just one example of what we can achieve using SEW-Eurodrive equipment."

John Gattellari, SEW-Eurodrive’s National Industry Specialist - food and beverage, said the Movigear drive system is a remarkably intelligent device.

“A systematic development approach was taken right from the start of the design process of the drive system with a very high level of system efficiency, which in turn helps lower energy costs,” he said. “While the technology has been around for a couple of years now, today, with electricity costs continually rising, companies really appreciate the benefits of investing in this technology.

“The motors comply with IE4 (Super Premium Efficiency) energy efficiency classification, and higher, offering impressive energy savings. Depending on the application, the Movigear drive system offers customers potential energy savings of up to 50%, every year,” he said.

The Movigear SNI (Single Line Network Installation) also allows simplified installation, which leads to significantly reduced installation and system costs.

“In contrast to current decentralised automation technology, which relies on two separate cables for energy and communication, the single line technology deployed with Movigear communicates over one of the phases of power, reducing the complications and cost of on-site installations. This simplified system structure can often reduce the time taken for start-ups from weeks to a matter of days,“ explained Gattelari.

“With this project, the manufacturer has linked the Movigear drives to Movifit SNI controllers which have been designed for decentralised installation in the field. The Movifit SNI can control up to ten Movigear drive units, passing the control information via ethernet signals.

“Also, customers are able to optimise a Movigear unit for different speeds, meaning a reduction in the number of variants required, with the corresponding number of spares required also heavily reduced.”

Gattellari explained that, with this technology, the ROI is often within two years. “In fact, the ROI on this project is expected to be even less than 18 months,” he said.

Gattellari went on to say that as well as providing the conveyor systems for the new section of the plant, ICA is also upgrading other parts of the plant and installing SEW’s Movigear DRC motors.

“These motors can simply be plugged into our standard gearbox. In this section of the plant, the manufacturer didn’t want to change anything mechanically, they just wanted to lower their energy costs and improve efficiencies - so they took off the old gearboxes and put new ones in with the same mountings."