DRIVING DOWN MACHINE SIZE
May 1st 2004

The latest glass handling equipment from Sheppee International of York has been designed around two Unidrive SP (Solutions Platform) drives from Control Techniques, reducing machine size and costs.

The two-axis Lehr loader stacks hot glass containers into a Lehr annealing oven. Its benefits are said to stem from the use of Unidrive SP variable speed drives and Unimotors for control of the X-Y quadrant and vertical (Z) axis movements.

Peter Clothier, technical manager, comments One of the key factors is the space saving. No separate plc is needed as we have opted for the plug-in second level applications plc module, and the drives have integrated braking resistors and EMC filter.

This means we have been able to build the very compact control panel on the machine itself, so theres no external cabling or emc issue. Yet we have been able to increase the maximum motor speed from 3600rpm to over 5000, so this unit can cope with big output production runs.

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