Well-conducted Powertrain with GE Fanuc control technology

At its factory in Kaiserslautern, Opel Powertrain GmbH is producing the latest in engine technology. The technology of control that is associated is supplied mostly by GE Fanuc Automation.

Since April 2001, Opel Powertrain GmbH of Kaiserslautern, Germany, produces aluminum Ecotec engines. To this end, the entire factory has been equipped with a modern manufacturing technology. This includes, for example, the technique of casting with casts of polystyrene for cylinders and cylinder heads, blocks milling outside of bearings of axes of crankshaft, cut by laser of the cranks, and the Assembly of the motor with torque load checking. Based on this technology, as well as in a well designed concept of Assembly, has been possible production of 2,000 daily engines, or 460,000 engines per year.

GE Fanuc Automation automation products are mainly used in the individual steps of the production of blocks and cylinder heads, shafts of crankshaft, connecting rods and camshafts, system of preparation of the cooling medium, the cylinder head and engine Assembly, as well as in the system of transport of parts.

147 Controls SPS, 316 terminals in operation, as well as the system Cimplicity PMC (Production Management Control) as a production control system are used, in total, 469 CNC GE Fanuc.

Product and system validation, management of the project in the factory, service and support, as well as coordination with suppliers of machine tools were carried out by GE Automotive. In total, 24 suppliers machines are equipped with GE Fanuc controls.

The pieces are produced in hundreds of different steps of preparation (e.g. grinding, bore, milling, washing, polishing, transport, split by laser and testing) before being assembled into an Ecotec engine. There are several interesting control solutions within the scope of this complicated process of manufacture.

For the production of cylinders butts, the Eelwema company has produced and developed four special machines. These are, machine Assembly, stamping and valve covers, as well as a machine of sealed, partial installation and verification. Each machine has up to 20 stations, in which parts go through several cycles of assembling and testing seconds in a sequence of production of 23.5. Group pieces are located at high speed to the next step of the operation, by cyclical cranks, transverse carts and transport with up to five servo units. These sequences are controlled by intelligent servo motor type PowerMate H. regulators

In the normal production of high speed it may happen that a component of the engine block or block the sequence due to a not foreseeable incident. Earlier, were used exclusively mechanical linkages for security. The disadvantage of these is that, in the case of obstruction, is necessary to perform a manual reset and back to adjust the references of the drive. Two additional encoders are often used to monitor the actual position of the drive unit. This has implications in a waste of time in the production sequence and a considerable effort extra in control technology. GE Fanuc has developed the role of protection against collision specially for this type of malfunction.

PowerMate (h) monitors the speed of rotation of the servo motor in real time. In the case of a surge, critic in time, torque previously parameterized (such as a blockage of the cyclic crank), the drive is for without losing its absolute position. Once the lock has been removed, the machine or the cyclic biela returned to get underway immediately. It is no longer necessary to make a new manual setting.

Ex-Cell-0 has produced 12 line transfer, each of which has a 10 stations for machining of cylinder blocks. Cylinder blocks are machining by processes of milling and bore. A special function consists of a process patented by Ex-Cell-0 for the machining of the holes of the crankshaft bearings. In this machine "boring online" three heads operate with their synchronized positions. In the course of production, the positions of the heads change with reference to others.

Series CNC GE Fanuc 16i-M is used to achieve this synchronization. The machine has three drive systems: for the rotating movement of the edge of the tool; for the support of the boring bar, as well as a drive to the rotating movement of the curve of fine adjustment of the tool behind the edge of this. The three drive systems revolve with position synchronized during the operation. If you need a fine tuning of the tools, will change the position of a drive. In this operation, the position of the curve of fine adjustment of the tool to the edge of the same, and therefore the bore diameter, amending. After the procedure of fine-tuning tool, the two drives remain unchanged with synchronized positions.

Besides the machines previously described, there is also a series of applications really interesting. For reasons of space shall briefly mention two other examples. One of them is the GSA company laptop transport system. This system carries the pieces between the individual tool machines at a speed of up to 130 m/min. The technology of drive and control of this system comes from GE Fanuc and is characterized by a high degree of accuracy of positioning in cycles of high speed and high acceleration.

The second example is the transfer provided by Mauser, in which machining connecting rods. In addition to the bore and milling, the piece is produced also by split laser. To this end, a laser is used to make two divisions. In this position of nominal breakdown, the connecting rod is cut in two and becomes to Threading. A dual-channel of the 160-MC Series of GE Fanuc CNC is used to control up to 9 axes.

An advanced factory of engines as Opel Powertrain, offers many interesting technical solutions. Some of these, from the field of control and drive technology have been described in this report. Meanwhile, the production has started. In the global project, manufacturers of machine tool working hand in hand with GE Fanuc. The effects of this collaboration were the smooth implementation in place. For Opel Powertrain, the result is a new factory of engines with an improved product quality and an increase in productivity