Faustel Inc. is a custom designer and manufacturer of machinery used in the production of coated, laminated and printed flexible or semi-rigid products. Starting out as Milprint Inc. in 1956, the company has grown into one of the nation's leaders in providing custom-designed converting machinery. Equally important, is the company's contributions to industry knowledge. To this end, Faustel provides an experimental and pilot production laboratory at its Germantown, WI, manufacturing facility, just outside of Milwaukee. Known as the "Tech Center", this secured area of their facility houses the special pilot coater/laminator system that allows rapid comparative and reproducible evaluations on new or improved products for later scale-up on the custom production line versions.

Such a facility requires having the latest and best available technologies for testing. It requires a high degree of flexibility in order to offer an optimum configuration for the best results. And this flexibility combined with the first requirement makes updating the machines with state-of-the-art improvements an easy accomplishment. All of this has proven to be an invaluable industry asset for Faustel customers. So, when the company decided to add vector controls to step up the accuracy in its production line, it selected Siemens as its brand of choice.

Vector control is the key success story to the Tech Center being able to operate its turret winder for maximum performance over a wide range of tension and speed requirements that are required in the various converting scenarios. The accuracy afforded is especially crucial in the on-the-fly splicing operation of the winding process. The sequence of cutting the web from one core and feeding it to the second core must be precise, albeit perfect. The speeds of the rolls must be perfectly matched and the tension held firmly during the changeover.

Vector control is not exclusive to Siemens, although Siemens is one of the earliest pioneers of the now widely accepted technology. Each manufacturer's mathematical source code for doing the vector calculations used is highly guarded and varies from company to company. Of those that Faustel evaluated for possible inclusion at the Tech Center, the Siemens vector control seemed to provide the most accurate results.

Tech Center Components
The converting substrate (i.e. paper, foil or film) can be treated and/or coated chemically. The multi-purpose coater is easily configurable for a huge variety of application methods such as reverse, reverse roll, roll, slot die, level on, etc. The temperatures and density of the coating rollers are carefully monitored as part of its tightly regulated close-looped control.

Although Faustel is not the only custom converting machinery manufacturer offering a test lab to its customers, it may well be the only one in North America that offers both UV curing and electron beam curing all in the same configuration.

From the curing area of the configuration, the web is drawn onto a vacuum roll before entering a 60 foot, six-zone convection air dryer. After the substrate passes out of the dryers, there is often a need for adding moisture. On-line moisture-adding equipment permits moisture lost in the drying process to be replaced before winding.

At the tail end of any converting process, the product is wound onto a core. It is important to have little or no folding of the substrate during this process. In many processes, it is also desirable to have "on-the-fly" splicing.

PLC and Drive Control
The programmable logic controller (PLC) and drive control for the Tech Center are both provided by Siemens. Using a SIMATIC® S7-400 master PLC and ET-200 remote I/O equipped with PROFIBUS®, signals from the process are formatted in a closed-loop relationship, then sent to the drives as commands. This intelligence enables the drives to properly direct the AC induction motors so that they can regulate speed, torque and tension throughout the process. Depending on configuration, a given process may be using between 15 and 20 drives, ranging widely in horsepower.

Prior to using vector lookup tables inside the drives memory to calculate the motor shaft position and produce accurate torque control, the inherent "slippage" associated between the induction motor's rotor and surrounding squirrel cage magnetic fields made the task difficult in comparison to DC motor and AC servo solutions.

What vector control brought to the party was a means by which an AC motor could easily and accurately change from one steady state operating condition to another. It uses a memory-stored lookup table that contains the correct instantaneous voltage levels for each stator winding of the motor. The vector controller continually updates this table during operation, and it computes this data by actually "modeling" the AC motor that is attached to it. Consequently, it is able to continuously check the motor and make instantaneous calculations that help it keep track of the exact position of the rotor flux wave, as well as give it extraordinary torque control.

Drive Functionality Setup and Changeovers
Another outstanding feature of the SIMOVERT MASTERDRIVES VC drives is their ease and range of configuration. The drives are equipped with automatic optimization routines that match the controller to the motor and load characteristics during startup. Built-in keypads provide access to parameter codes that make the initial setup of the drive extremely easy. There are no scopes or special equipment required to do the optimization-everything is automatic once the code is executed from the keypad. There is a huge range of parameter settings available, all of whose functionality is carefully documented with both hard copy and electronic CD media. There are several levels of parameters from basic to advanced--more than enough to meet the rigid requirements of any converting process scenario imaginable.

Parameter settings can be saved, downloaded or uploaded. This feature is handy when a new setup is going to require similar settings used with a process tested earlier. Also, once a process has been tweaked with just the right parameter settings, the saved parameter file is easily transportable to the manufacturing line for the large-scale system equipment when it is ultimately built. This saves time and chances of error when programming the drives for the new equipment.

Conclusions
Faustel has, in affect, became a systems integrator for designing and testing converting system scenarios. New vector technologies, improved automation interfaces, open architectures and high speed communication systems have opened a lot of doors to improving and designing new systems for the converting industry. However, these factors alone are not sufficient. Other factors such as R&D investment, range of products available, international experience, and a continuous pool of personnel who understand the converting industry thoroughly are equally important. Since there are also certain proprietary Faustel-developed functions that have to work hand-and-hand with the overall drive control, Faustel needs a vendor that does not have employee turnover that requires extensive retraining on inner-workings of inherent system requirements. To this end, Faustel has forged closer ties with customers and suppliers alike.

Product Information: Siemens Drives Products