Siemens “Solution Partner” Advanced Industrial Controls provides Goss Magnapak inserting system upgrade together with Enternet Control Systems (ECS) in seven weeks.

In the world of high-speed Newspaper production printing and inserting, the need to remain at peak performance is paramount. Recently, a leading bindery and newspaper equipment and printing controller supplier, Enternet Control Systems (Glastonbury, Connecticut) was presented the challenge to retrofit a Goss Magnapak newspaper inserting system. ECS serves many of the largest magazine, catalog, and newspaper printers in the country.

Turning to its partner on this project, Advanced Industrial Controls (AIC), a St. Louis area Siemens-authorized Solution Partner who specializes in field service and machine retrofits in the printing industry, ECS conducted a joint situation analysis to determine the components and software needed. It was decided that a complete electrical control and motion upgrade was required, necessitating the replacement of obsolete and tech-incompatible components, software and HMI.

The obsolete OEM inserter controls on the machine were to be replaced with a new ECS eNews Model 3000 Controller for monitoring and control of the inserter, along with downstream tracking and stacker control. Interface to the new controller over ProfiNet was required to allow multiple machine components to be interactively linked. Interface to customer’s existing planning system was provided through the eNews system as well as connectivity to the customers other four (4) existing eNews systems to enable flexibility in production as well as comprehensive reporting.

As the systems integrator and controls specialist on the project, AIC utilized the industry-proven Siemens Printing Solutions system architecture, which includes all the hardware platforms and software libraries for high usability and standardization. Having this capability handy drastically reduced the system evaluation and field testing required, from the sensors to the drives, PLCs, motion controller, HMI and wireless data communications hardware, as well as software.

Padraic Stapleton, project engineering manager from AIC, comments, “Using our experience retrofitting machines across many industries and our in-depth knowledge on the operations on the Magnapak, we first determined what functionality was needed for this machine. This included high-speed motor synchronization, safety requirements, high-speed signal processing to and from the ECS eNews controller, an ability to recover smoothly from bus failures, elimination of obsolete components, simplified operator controls and the ability for the customer’s maintenance personnel to troubleshoot issues. We then utilized our experience with the various Siemens product lines and chose the appropriate components and software to meet the requirements.”

Stapleton further noted that an aggressive project schedule was devised to fit the customer’s production requirements. This schedule comprised pre-engineering and fabrication that were performed at the AIC facility, including testing. This pre-onsite work allowed AIC to minimize the machine’s downtime and the actual installation was completed in seven days, as planned. The customer was ready to go online in seven weeks, also per plan. “This time frame exceeded the customer’s expectations and, overall, the project was completed on time, on budget and without any hiccups,” Stapleton mused.

An ambitious goal was set for this retrofit, as the result of these component and software upsides. The target for completion of the entire project was only two months, with installation calculated at one week and going back online in seven weeks.

Functionally, all hardware was powered up, configured and tested at AIC by their personnel, prior to beginning the install. AIC prewired all the hardware and also manufactured the back panels for the hardware, to further reduce install time onsite. At the customer’s location, all installation was indeed accomplished in one work week, performed by AIC technicians, so no other outside contractor costs were incurred, and plant personnel were freed to perform other tasks during the install time.

The startup was indeed completed in seven weeks, including all I/O checks, drive/motor tuning, testing of the entire Siemens motion control system plus training of the operations and maintenance personnel. Every station in the entire line on the Goss Magnapak was revamped, including the PLC enclosures, main drive cabinets, hoppers, releases, master and slave HMI, with wireless Scalance data transmitters provided for flexibility and mobility in the system.

Following restart of the line and over a tracked period of time in production, the end user’s plant has reported an ongoing net production increase of 15%, compared to the line performance before this upgrade and retrofit of the motion control system. Benefits to the end user included the elimination of obsolete components, a substantial increase in reliability with the new Siemens hardware, increased diagnostic capability resulting from the built-in data tracking tools and connectivity on the Sinamics drive system, a decrease in the complexity of the machine functions due to the incorporation of integrated safety functions in the new drives and most notably increased usability and flexible staging possibilities of the eNews controller onboard. At the most basic level, the distributed I/O system is highly scalable and connects seamlessly to the central controller over Profinet. A plug-and-play scenario is provided, making alterations on-the-fly more practical, faster and requiring less training time for the operators.

From the safety side, all e-stops, pushbuttons and guard switches are connected to the safety PLC through integrated safety I/O, with Siemens ProfiSafe onboard to control the STO (Safe Torque Off) function to all the drives in the system.

Device replacement was simplified, as the new devices can be detected and configured via the communication network to allow the replacement of modules without the need for any reconfiguration. The system automatically addresses and names the replacement modules, saving substantial setup time per station.

With integrally redundant Sinamics drive communication, in the event of one hopper drive or Profinet cable failure, all other hoppers remain operational and the drive can be disabled from the HMI without rewiring.

Following restart of the line and over a tracked period of time in production, the end user’s plant has reported an ongoing net production increase of 15%, compared to the line performance before this upgrade and retrofit of the motion control system. Benefits to the end user included:
-elimination of obsolete components
-substantial increase in reliability with the new Siemens hardware
-increased diagnostic capability resulting from the built-in data tracking tools and connectivity on the Sinamics drive system
-decrease in the complexity of the machine functions due to the incorporation of integrated safety functions in the new drives
-increased usability and flexible staging possibilities of the eNews controller onboard.
At the most basic level, the distributed I/O system is now highly scalable and connects seamlessly to the central controller over Profinet. A plug-and-play scenario is provided, making alterations on-the-fly more practical, faster and requiring less training time for the operators, according to the end user.

Stapleton concludes, “The Siemens drives were chosen due to multiple reasons, including integrated safety functionality, built-in high speed inputs and outputs that were required for specific machine functions, proven hardware reliability, simplistic overall hardware architecture, proven motion synchronization functionality and the ability to have the drive configuration parameters integrated into one software programming package.”