Bosch Rexroth announces a new brochure featuring a wide range of products, technologies and concepts designed to maximize manufacturing energy savings and sustainability – one of today’s key engineering challenges. Available at www.boschrexroth-us.com/sustainable, Sustainability with System: Rexroth Solutions for Energy Efficiency focuses on helping industries meet ambitious goals for energy and power conservation, machine efficiency and emissions control.

The 16-page color brochure highlights the company’s capabilities in overall energy management concepts such as closed-loop energy recovery systems and mobile hydraulic regenerative braking, as well as specific technologies like intelligent drives and controls, pneumatics, hydraulics and linear motion.

The brochure also covers several areas of sustainable manufacturing and industrial automation systems that have grown in importance in today’s environment, including:

• Machine specifications that create high performance with minimal wasted energy or space
• Generating and regenerating power exactly when and where it’s needed
• Optimizing power according to machine performance needs
• Recovering energy and directing it elsewhere to provide on-the-spot power
• Intelligent solutions for continuous “green” motion control.

The brochure also includes application examples of sustainable solutions in action.

Rexroth’s Sustainability with System brochure can help anyone who’s involved in designing, building, engineering or adapting today’s industrial automation technology to gain insight that may help produce new ideas for meeting the challenge that sustainability represents.

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 24th June 2009

HAWE Hydraulics, supplier of controls to the mobile and industrial markets, announces the type KA power unit, the latest model in the HAWE Hydraulics product line.? The compact power unit type KA increases the service life of costly components such as gearboxes, rotor blades, towers and foundations by hydraulically controlling yaw and rotor blades. This reduces wear and tear on the braking function.? These compact power units mount next to an actuator making them an excellent fit for localized installations.

The hydraulic power unit consists of a tank with an integrated submerged motor, a radial piston or gear pump that is directly attached to the motor shaft (without a coupling) and a connection block. The modules are mounted directly onto the connection block.? In the event of a disruption to the braking module that may cause interference, the disruption can be identified and the module easily exchanged with no need to remove any hoses connected to the consumers.

All components are made of steel and therefore, capable of withstanding extremely high pressure.? The radial piston pumps can supply pressurized oil up to 10,000psi, while the valves are designed for pressures in excess of 5,800psi.? The pressure level of wind power plants is below 3,600psi, so the extremely durable pumps and valves are ideal for use in these installations.?

For safety reasons, the brakes of a wind power plant must be reliable at all times; therefore, HAWE Hydraulics uses leak-free directional seated valves.? These valves have a considerably higher switching reliability than the directional spool valves, as dirt particles are flushed out when the valve is open.? This type of design prevents silting that can occur and cause spool valves to stick.

The type KA compact power unit has been designed for maximum efficiency with minimal weight and space requirements and can be used either vertically or horizontally.? Three tank extensions allow for differing oil volume requirements.? Depending on the tank extension the usage volume can be increased from a minimum of two liters to a maximum of 10 liters.? The power unit can be operated with all voltages, including 690V and is also available in a “Cold Climate” version.

HAWE offers active and passive brake control, with or without a flushing function for the brakes and brake lines. Additional modules are available for adjusting the pitch, roof openers for the turbine pod, rotor lock, and control of on-board handling cranes.

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 23rd June 2009

TVL (Toeleveringsbedrijf van Landuyt) in Wetteren, Belgium has been finishing transmission housings for wind turbines for the past several years. When they began, production numbered around 2,000 housings annually. Today, their production has doubled to 4,000, while future planning calls for an annual capacity of 6,000 housings per year.

The company produces transmission housings with high-precision machined bores having diameters of up to 1640mm (64.5″). The tolerance for a 650mm (25.6″) bore is only ± 25µm (±.001″), and this must be measured and verified on every housing. All in all, the bores are drilled at 0.08% of nominal diameter size. Managing director Geert Van Landuyt states: “We could not measure the big transmission housings in-house. So we were working together with a service provider with the necessary equipment in Germany.” As production quantities grew, transportation to the service provider became a costly proposition. “Ultimately, we decided we needed our own coordinate measuring machine (CMM).”

Temperature sensors enable measuring under shop floor conditions

Today, each of the 4-ton transmission housings are now measured on a Leitz PMM-F high precision CMM manufactured by Hexagon Metrology GmbH (Wetzlar, Germany) The housings are measured in a room with identical temperature conditions as the shop floor. This environment eliminates the usual waiting times required when parts must adjust to ambient temperatures in a thermally-controlled metrology lab. Currently, TVL operates in two shifts, and in some production areas three shifts, with the measuring cell running around-the-clock for “just in time” production.

The CMM’s monolithic gantry design has a length of 4.5m (14.6ft), width of 4.36m(14.2 ft), and a height of 5.09m (16.5 ft). The machine has a measuring volume of 3000mm x 2000mm x 1600mm (118″ x 78.7″ x 63″). The U-formed CMM body is made of gray granite, which does not absorb as much humidity as black granite, contributing to better overall stability of the measurement results.

TVL transmission housings are transported with a crane to the CMM. After the automated alignment of the part, and when the part’s temperature is read by the CMM, the measuring process begins. The actual temperature of the transmission housing is applied to the measuring program’s points and evaluations, ensuring the same measured points are taken at arbitrary temperatures each time. The entire measurement process takes about 30 minutes and includes some points in nearly inaccessible areas of the housing.

The tolerance on the axle bore of a 4-ton transmission case used in a wind turbine is just 50µ.

High Precision, Fast Measurement

Once the decision was made to buy a CMM, Van Landuyt provided a benchmark for select manufacturers with the task of measuring the axle and bearing bushings in a transmission case for parallelism, straightness and precision of the diameter. The measurement of the large axle openings of the transmission housing were determined by 20 single measured points each. The Leitz CMM results were precise as compared to known values, with a high repeatability and measurement uncertainty of only 2.5µm.

Each Leitz CMM is assembled to order in Hexagon Metrology’s production hall, and the assembly technician makes adjustments and tests the machine’s measuring results and repeatability. The CMM is delivered to the customer site completely pre-assembled, except the Y-Axis that is remounted on site. After installation, the geometric errors of the CMM are corrected using a laser measuring device. Test measurements are carried out to confirm compliance with the stated accuracy specification.

Innovation of a Retractable Tool Changer

The implementation process of a high precision measurement machine involves extensive consultation between the manufacturer and the end-user. Many questions needed to be addressed. How precise must the measurement be? Which measuring points should be scanned? Are there special application issues that should be taken into account? The close cooperation between TVL and Hexagon Metrology led to another special feature: a retractable tool change rack.

As a rule, complex inspections of large parts require several styli changes during the measuring process because no single stylus can reach all the points to be measured. A conventional tool rack placed at the end of the measuring volume can restrict the range of the styli system, especially if particularly long styli configurations are required. Much of the active measuring range can be lost using a standard stationary tool change rack. As a result of the collaboration, Hexagon Metrology developed a retractable stylus change range, which swings itself into the measuring volume for the change, and then out of the measuring volume after a styli change is completed. This innovation keeps the complete measuring area available and accessible. This capability was especially important due to difficult to access features on TVL’s parts.

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 23rd June 2009