Motion Controller Smooths Out Bearing Manufacturing (.PDF Download)

June 2, 2017
Motion Controller Smooths Out Bearing Manufacturing (.PDF Download)

Plant managers and engineers in many industries are finding that productivity can be increased by tightly grouping the machinery that performs successive production steps into integrated workcells. This has been the experience at the Miba Bearings plant in McConnellsville, Ohio. The company recently installed a new bearing press workcell manufactured by Multipress Inc., Columbus, Ohio. The new workcell includes a shearing press, a blanking press, and a two-stage forming press with robotic part transfer for the manufacture of split bearings for crankshafts.

Miba has been using an array of discrete heavy stamping presses for bearing manufacture, but faced with the need to increase the plant’s manufacturing capacity while maintaining a high level of product quality, Plant Manager Jerry Donahue looked for the most efficient way of increasing the plant’s output. Plant Engineer Josh Gillespie specified a new bearing workcell that has a single programmable logic controller (PLC) commanding all three machines (shearing press, blanking press, and forming press), with a human-machine interface (HMI) that allows control of the whole manufacturing process by a single operator. The tight integration of the line, coupled with new-generation control technology, has cut production cycle times, while making better part-quality information available and reducing waste product. “We used to view bearing manufacture as a series of separate steps, but with production set up as a smooth flow, our productivity and quality have increased,” says Gillespie.