Novel plant, automated stacking unit
The new automated stacking unit for phosphorous screens in the Shanghai Novel plant used to break down on numerous occasions. Maintenance engineers then discovered that the control cable (cross-section 3x0.25mm2) used next to two air pipes was faulty. Yang Rong, responsible at the plant for “Slim Production”: “The distance here amounts only to a meter with 300,000 double strokes per month. The space for the unit is conceivably small. The bending radius of the e-chain® is correspondingly tight at just 18 mm. ” The control cable with a copper conductor was not able to withstand the mechanical stresses in the e-chain® in such tight conditions. After operating for just one week, the unit had to be stopped for over 20 minutes several times to replace the cable. Yang Rong: “We have eight stacking tables of the same type in our unit. The same problem occurred everywhere and there was interference in the screen feed. ” He puts the costs of lost profits as a result of machine downtimes at 70,000 RMB (around 6,500 EUR) – “that comes to, even at a conservative calculation, 0.8 million RMB a year (around 75,000 EUR),” says Rong.
