3 Fundamentals of press design

Sheet metal forming lines
sion following a change of requirements or after exchanging defective
components. The benefits here include shorter repair times and thus an
increase of press up-time.
Highly-dynamic electrical feed systems in conjunction with efficient
control and regulation systems for movement synchronization are
increasingly replacing mechanically coupled drive systems. This development
not only allows mechanical mechanisms to be simplified and
flexibility to be further increased, but in certain cases also enhances
productivity.
The changes taking place in the field of work organization in many
stamping plants are imposing new demands, in particular on the line
control center. Production lines are being managed increasingly by
independently acting teams of employees on their own responsibility.
These teams require information on site related to production and
machine data, to production quality, waiting production jobs and
maintenance work to be carried out. Only with this information at
their fingertips are team members in a position to optimize the productivity
of their line and to assume control functions on the production
level. As a result, machine and production data acquisition systems
such as those described above will continue to be more extensively used
and the functional scope of their application extended to cover ever
wider fields.
Multi media-based production line information systems which permit
fast, selective access to stored line documentation and additional
information on the elimination of faults and routine maintenance will
be integrated in the future into the press control center. Using these
systems, it will also be possible for operating personnel to enter their
own findings into the information data base and so develop their own
experience data base.
In general terms, future developments in the field of control engineering
will concentrate on reducing complexity and on the development
of more efficient systems for repair and maintenance support to
reduce the costs of press control and increase production line uptime.
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