10,000 rims nonstop, day in day out – everything runs smoothly with AS Interface
A normal day at Volkswagen (VW) in Wolfsburg, Germany: hundreds of rims run along the new 400-meter long conveyor section to the welding station every hour – more than 10,000 each day. The most important thing about this is that this number has to be guaranteed for the subsequent car assembly line, and the system must remain flexible in order to meet future requirements.
The Actuator Sensor Interface system offers every possible assistance in this respect. Each subsection of the new conveyor line was commissioned and incorporated into the manufacturing process immediately without interrupting rim production. Simply switch on and the system runs. No problem for AS Interface (AS-i).
The VW rims have been arriving just in time since 14 AS-i masters have been ruling the conveyor line. 46 AS-i compact starters provide the driving force, 150 photoelectric barriers and 70 inductive BERO proximity switches monitor the path taken by the rims. 28 control panels, some with plain language display at the AS-i, enable convenient local operator control. A total of 14 AS-i masters collect the binary information.
The photograph shows distributed compact starters.
Easy commissioning and maintenance with AS Interface
Wegener + Stapel, the engineering company from Bergen, Germany, is another company enjoying the advantages offered by the Actuator Sensor Interface: 60% space saving in the switchgear cabinet, fast system documentation, simple commissioning, user-friendly drive tests using hand-held terminals. The VW maintenance personnel are also enthusiastic about the clearly structure layout of the system. Pinpointed trouble shooting and fast replacement of defective controller components: that means plug and play with the autoprogramming function of the AS-i. The easy commissioning, maintenance and testing of the drives using the hand-held terminal for the AS-i compact starter constituted particularly convincing arguments in this respect. It indicates the direction of rotation in automatic mode; and in manual mode, the drives can be started and tested independent of the PLC.