OSAI has announced that it now provides its OPENcontrol to BTB Transfer Systems giving its customers the opportunity to retrofit and revamp existing transfer systems. This creates efficient and cost-effective productivity improvements at approximately 60% of old system cost while maintaining machining tolerance to within 0.002 mm, a new platform that matches the existing machine, and with future expandability.
BTB Transfer SPA, located in Bovezzo BS, Italy, has more than 850 installations operated by 150 different customers in 30 countries, BTB Transfer technology utilizes highly productive and precise rotating table systems for NC drilling, milling, cutting, broaching and marking. The chip cutting and material removal process operates at high speed producing large volume of precision-machined parts. Applications include complex components machined from steel, aluminum, brass, cast iron and other materials for use in vehicular, appliance, plumbing, heating and air conditioning applications. Components include a variety of valves, connectors and fittings that are critical to a system's reliable operation. When component changes are required, the OSAI OPENcontrol allows for retrofitting and revamping these transfer systems quickly and simply.
Alessandro Aletto, BTB Transfer Service Manager reported, "One of our longtime customers operating a 20-year-old BTB 8S-15U-CN-HY NC transfer system needed a system upgrade. Following a market analysis of available products, they identified OSAI as the best supplier that offered a flexible, scalable and modular solution for their production revamping that would guarantee high performance."
BTB Transfer's customer machine had 7 stations, plus 1 station for parts loading/unloading, on which there were 15 operating units. Those units managed all drilling/threading stages and the grooving cycle while finishing the gasket holders, however with low cycle time.
OSAI's solution for improved cycle time was the OPEN-XL CNC with several bridge modules and a 17-inch touchscreen monitor. The OPENcontrol family is made with highly scalable CNCs, based on different hardware platforms. So the OPEN-XL selected by the customer had capacity to manage up to 24 machining processes with 12 simultaneously interpolated axes per process for a total number of 64 axes.
The original configuration of the machine added 2 operating units and 10 inverters managed by using EtherCAT fieldbus and a safety PLC. OSAI's printed circuit boards implement the fieldbus and are based on Ethernet, which allow the management of a wide range of devices controlled by different protocols (OS-Wire, Mechatrolink III, Mechatrolink I & II, EtherCAT), in addition to auxiliary fieldbuses such as CANopen, Profibus and Modbus.
"BTB Transfer recommended upgrading the transfer system using the most powerful CNC in order to best manage all the processes involved and to guarantee performance and gaining greater product scalability," reported Aletto. "This led to maximum optimization of the entire process for the highest level of productivity from the transfer system. "Initially, the customer sought only to update the NC but realized that two new operating units had to be added (one for drilling and the other for tapping). That was in addition to the change of spindles with inverters, so that system speed could be easily set."
OSAI's Dual Core CPU of the OPEN-XL offers high computational power, especially for development of complex applications on multi-process machines like BTB Transfer systems having various axes. It is important to note that the versatile software architecture with dual O.S. (Windows CE and WES7) gives simultaneous execution on the same hardware, of both real-time CNC applications and generic Windows software.
"Upgrade wiring of BTB transfer systems was easily accomplished with the compact 6-axis bridges, each one having 64 inputs and outputs, which was another highly scalable feature of the OSAI OPENcontrol system," reported Aletto.
For more information contact:
Ivica Simunic
National Sales Manager
OSAI USA
711 East Main Street
Chicopee, MA 01020
413-598-5200
sales.osai.usa@primaelectro.com
www.osaicnc.com