We have engineered hundreds of projects with values up to £500,000. Below are details of some of our upgrades:

EMP Belt Line for Kunshan, Jiangsu Province China. Design, supply, commission control system for a belt manufacturing machine. Fully integrated Siemens solution comprising PLC, SINAMICS Drives, WinCC, PROFISafe system (safety integrated PLC).

Lithographic Aluminium Strip Line for Zheng Zhou. Turnkey project for strip processing line, 14xSiemens AC SINAMICS Drives, Siemens PLC, SCADA, Servo drives, PROFISafe. Totally integrated package makes lithographic plate for use in the printing industry.

Paper coating machine. Design, supply, installation and commissioning of complete drive system retrofit to their paper coating line. 98xAC Vector Drives, 13xDC Section drives, 40A to 720A.

4x off Jagenberg Dual-roll rewinder. Complete control system upgrade for 4x Jagenberg dual-roll winders. Complete pneumatic, electrical and safety system upgrade on the machine. SSD DC Drives, Siemens S7-300 PLC, PILZ, PNOZ Multi Programmable safety.

Dual-roll MYLAR coater control system. Design, supply, commission on two-sided coater for MYLAR product, Siemens S7-400 PLC, Reliance Drives, Rockwell SCADA.

Dual-roll Tyvek coater control system. Design, supply, commision on dual-roll gravure coater, 4xAC Vector drives in load-share, flotation oven and floatation air-turn unit control, GE Fanuc PLC, Cimplicity SCADA, Siemens Drives (Micromaster, Masterdrives)

Process Line Ltd. Italy

Aluminium Strip Line for Verona Lastra Italy

Makes lithographic plate for use in the printing industry.

Process Line Ltd. South Africa

Aluminium Strip Line for First Graphics, South Africa.

Makes lithographic plate for use in the printing industry.

Crown Paints, Darwen

5x palletising line upgrades for paint tins/

News Siemens PLC control system for 5xpaint tin palletising lines.

Replaced obsolete Siemens SIMATIC 505/535 PLC.

Linpac Packaging, Yorkshire

Extruder 71 Control Panel Replacement.

Produces plastic film which is vacuum formed into containers for various foods.

Main extruder and melt pump replacement, Siemens PLC, SSD Drives solution.

CCL Decorative Sleeves

DCM Printing Press Modifications.

Design, supply and commissioning of a new drive system for their existing print machine.

FFP Packaging, Northampton

Wax Machine Line Drive System.

Design, supply and commissioning of a new DC drive system for their wax coating line.

Flexel International, Glenrothes, Scotland

New control system for a printing/laminating machine

Design, supply and commissioning of a new machine control system for manufacturing Ecofilm under-floor heating. Flexel International are one of the largest manufacturers of under-floor, ceiling and compact panel heating elements.

Kodak Ltd

Control System for Jagenberg machine.

High speed cutting line including rotary shear control system.

Aluminium Strip coating line control system.

Outokumpu Stainless Ltd.

Foil Annealing Line control system.

Including Wonderware SCADA package, GE Fanuc PLC, Parker SSD Drives.

Lawson Mardon Flexibles

Sciavi Printing Press Refit – Turnkey Package

DuPont Teijin Films Ltd, Wilton

Stenter Line Drive System – Turnkey Package

C Perkin Ltd.

Cardboard Tube Machine – High speed Siemens servo drive application.

Manufacturing cardboard tubes at linear material input speed of 100m/min.

Safety Scanner Issues and EN999

Posted on July 2, 2024

Optima were recently asked to advise on a safety guarding application for one of our customers.

There had been a number of false trips of the laser scanner causing the machine to stop. As a result of this, a plastic chain ‘barrier’ had been fitted as a temporary measure with instructions to operators to not breach the barrier whilst the machine was running.

The customer naturally wanted this rectifying as soon as possible, so Optima performed a short-notice service visit to site.

On the site visit, our engineer noted that the scanner was showing a code which indicated that the front screen required cleaning.

Once the screen was cleaned thoroughly the scanner did not show any faults or errors and was in normal run mode.

However, we performed further checks on the original software to ensure that the scanner configuration still met the requirements of the safety guarding application.

The diagrams to the left show the Warning Field configuration (Yellow) and the Protective Field (Red). Both of these were confirmed to be operational.

The warning field causes the klaxon to operate and the protective field caused an emergency stop of the machine.

We did, however find a few concerns that needed to be addressed.

1. None of the scanner safety circuit had been documented on any drawings.

2. Non-compliance with EN999 ‘Safety of machinery – the positioning of protective equipment in respect of approach speeds of parts of the human body’ includes a formula to be used to calculate the distance from a hazard that a safety zone must be triggered. Based on the stopping times of the machine, the scanner was placed too close to the machine to be effective in an emergency.

We are working closedly with our customer to assist them with this application and help them achieve a safe and effective solution to this.

If you need any support with safety applications or other upgrades, please get in touch.

Industrial Automation and
Control Systems Engineering

Projects