Conversion from needle to thread according to the rules of art
Balta is the largest manufacturer of textile floor coverings in Europe. The weaving mill in Waregem is not the only one in the group, but it is the only one with an extrusion department to make the yarn. A perfect trade-off, provided the extrusion lines can run reliably. Thanks to the conversion by ATS, that good operation is once again assured for years to come.
Do you know the saying warp and weft? They are actually weaving terms to say that something happens very often. That something always goes together, like the warp threads and cross threads of a woven fabric. Anyone who walks through production at Balta Home (which is part of Victoria Plc) understands it immediately upon witnessing the synchronous interplay between those thousands of threads and the shooting bobbins. Today, plant manager Rik Pappijn takes us even deeper into production. Right behind the 60 looms, the yarn is extruded from polypropylene by Balta itself. "A process that involves a lot of know-how to give our products specific properties. The salt and pepper in our recipes, so to speak. Think uv-resistance for outdoors, but also something as simple as ensuring that a carpet lies nice and flat. With knowledge and technology, we really do make a difference."
Extruders operate looms
No coincidence that the extrusion department is right next to the looms. "If the yarn isn't to your liking, we get told immediately. You have to be able to take a beating when you're down in the kitchen," laughs Balta production manager Wim Waelkens. "We process more than 150 different qualities every year, accounting for 220,000 km of thread, which we weave here ourselves or send to our weaving mill in Turkey. Thicker, thinner, rounder or rougher, the slightest deviation is immediately detected. And that also makes the quality of the carpets you end up delivering." When starting up its own extrusion department in '99, it took a week to deliver a loom. "When me and two colleagues started it, this was still an empty room," Waelkens points out. "There was even a wall missing, whereas extrusion is just served by constant conditions. Ideally, we run full continuous between the two vacation periods (mid-July and late December)." Today, that same weaving boom was produced on a half-hourly basis. With that, Balta produces 2.4 million square meters of carpet each month. Every day, 70,000 carpets leave for customers in 119 countries.
Help from Hawaii
That consistent, reliable operation was at the top of the priority list should come as no surprise. However, the age of the original installations began to weigh on. "Too many breakdowns, too many problems getting spare parts, too many start-up difficulties, and the knowledge that was lost from the original manufacturer," Waelkens adds. "I still remember that during a startup the entire programming suddenly disappeared. My last lifeline was a cell phone number of an engineer who had worked for the manufacturer of the extruders. Now retired. But he called me back from his hammock in Hawaii and was able to explain how to reset the settings. It was an old program, but enough to get production going. Saved, but in the nick of time. We didn't want this in the future."
Wish list translated into steering and visualization
The three extruder lines would therefore be converted to the current state of the art. "Buying new machines would have meant that we would have had to give up too much of our own modifications and know-how to get another line tailored to our production," Pappijn explains the decision. "However, ATS wanted to take up the gauntlet. And with the update of the drives of the extrusion line a few years earlier, they had already proven themselves to be an able partner in this kind of process. We wanted to evolve from a black-box control to a line with more possibilities for adjustments, for communication and for diagnosis. ATS translated that wish list for us into an entirely new Siemens PLC (1516F-3PN/DP) control and corresponding visualization in WinCC."
No margin
The project was split into three parts, line by line in other words. ATS not only signed for the programming, visualization and communication but also delivered new cabinets, new cabling to the main drive (S120 drives, total 100 kW) of the line, a new geared motor for the melt pump and a new reluctance motor for the fibrilator roller. The drives that ATS previously converted (G120 of 132 kW) were recovered. The timing for all this? Three weeks: first electrical conversion, then IO testing and then test run. Waelkens: "In week four, everything has to run perfectly from the first second: at the right quality and speed. It has to. There is no margin." Three years ago, it was the first line's turn. Last spring, line 2 got its revamp. "No copy-paste," says project manager Tom Bracke of ATS' BU Automation. We looked at where things could be even better. For example, the cabinets are now completely closed and water-cooled with air ducts all the way to the bottom, so the electrical components are no longer affected by rising temperatures or dust. An important factor in this environment."
Integration temperature controller
The main innovation, however, involved the addition of a new temperature controller from Gefran. "That serves to control the resistors that heat the polypropylene. In the first line, this is done with pulses, but this does not provide enough control. As a result, the parameters and thus the quality cannot be tuned finely enough. Gefran's high-tech modules are changing that in line 2 ." Specifically, we are talking about the GFX4 power controller, a popular choice in extrusion processes. "A world we are really at home in with this compact yet powerful module," says Koen Vermeren, general manager Gefran Benelux. "For this application, its diagnostic and communication capabilities were particularly strong assets. This allows, for example, the switching on and off of the line to be extremely controlled. Furthermore, the module also registers energy consumption, a key focus for Balta."
Keep thinking along
Thanks to software written by ATS, the replacement of such a GFX4 power controller can be done plug-and-play. After all, the configuration of the parameters is secured in the overall system. But ATS wouldn't be ATS if they didn't already see new opportunities for improvement with the preparation of Line 3. Bracke: "The communication of the Gefran controllers today is via Profinet (master) and Modbus RTU (slaves). By running them entirely via Modbus TCP, we would gain another few percent in response time and only one type of component would be needed. In addition, that better control would actually allow us to run without an encoder. One less component, which again saves space in the cabinet and chances of malfunctions because an encoder is still sensitive to dust and imbalance." Still, the results are already more than worth it. At the flawless startup in March, the converted line was immediately able to record a 20% higher output. "It is no longer a black-box. Even if ATS ceases to exist tomorrow, everything can continue to run perfectly thanks to the open source software. And because of the data exchange via OPC-UA, monitoring can be done remotely."
Very satisfied
But most importantly, the conversion has ensured a firm reduction in downtime. "ATS can really be proud of its organization. My technical talents are limited to connecting a light. I am only called to a project when it is not running as it should. With ATS, that was never necessary. When you see how much chaos small projects already cause due to contractors not following agreements or safety regulations, I can only be very positive about how ATS handles things. During the first week there were always ten employees present from 6 am to 10 pm. Communication could be done in Dutch. In the fourth week they were still on standby for any adjustments where necessary. That service makes it all so much easier," Pappijn concludes.
