In a recent installation, reinforced concrete pipes are removed from the turntable of a pipe machine by a release-handling unit and transported to the drying area at speeds of up to 2,5 m/s. During this step, the handling unit opens the pipe mould and removes it from the pipe with carefully calculated movements then returns the empty mould to the turntable. This is repeated with an overall cycle time of only about 2 minutes for DN 300 pipes. In turn the removal-handling unit takes the dried pipes from the drying area and transports them to the finished part store via post-processing and checking stations.
The release and removal-handling units are high-capacity crane bridges, each 20 m in length, which run on the same crane way. They have coupled control and a permanent collision-monitoring feature. The release-handling unit takes precedence over the removal-handling unit, in order to avoid downtime on the pipe machine.
Another handling unit, the stack gripper, runs on its own crane way and transports the pipes from the finished parts store to one of two pallet locating stations. Here, the pipes are placed on pallets in alternate directions. Meanwhile, a heavy-duty forklift at the other station collects the stacked pipe pallet and takes it to the warehouse.
Handling must be precise. The bridge drives of the release and removal units are configured as asynchronous servo drives, in view of the required maximum speed of 2,5 m/s, the shortest cycle time of 2 minutes and the positioning accuracy of ±3 mm, with total loads of about 30 t and a clamping distance of 20 m.
The four travel drives on each bridge - SEW parallel shaft helical geared servomotors - and the trolley travelling and hoist drives of the handling units, are synchronously controlled and accurately positioned by AC Movidrive geared motors with integrated positioning control and Profibus interface. The position control loop is also corrected using an absolute linear scale to take account of possible wheel slip. The drives on the stack gripper also have AC geared motors with Movidrive. The picture shows the drying area, where the release-handling unit has just placed a fresh pipe.
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