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Case Study The Timken® Company Efficiency and quality – Vehicle-Mounted industrial PC‘s optimize control of steel-making process

noax industrial PC‘s provide reliable real-time communications

Orchestrating a Vast Steel Making Operation The view from the cab of the moveable crane suspended 30 feet from the floor at the Timken Company’s Faircrest Steel Plant in Canton, OH is spectacular. From that vantage point, Timken employee Jeff Thompson directs the pour as a stream of red-hot molten steel flows into ingot molds below in a display “The noax computers with of smoke and flash. Yet their high-contrast 1024 high up in the crane he x 768 resolution touch is able to pin point the screens give my crews the pour thanks to easy-toeasy to read information read information from a they need.”

15” screen noax industrial computer. This is just part of the process at the Timken Company steel mill in Canton, OH. The company that has built its reputation on roller bearings now has a major portion of their business producing high-quality steel. About 80% of its output goes to outside customers in the form of a million annual ingot tons to plants around the world, all of it made to customer order through a tight control of both chemistry and process.

Computers as flexible as the operation they oversee Steel produced here is totally made from scrap metal, stored in piles throughout its 26-acre scrap yard north of the plant. The scrap piles are sorted by material type and loaded by Sennebogen cranes into 61-ton capacity Komatsu dump trucks. At this facility Timken uses four cranes and four trucks, each with a noax C12 vehicle terminal equipped with the rugged N7A all-in-one motherboard developed in-house by noax. These terminals are wirelessly connected (both cellular and 802.11) through a Cisco military-style 3200 Router to a server in the main Computer Room. According to Jeff Yackley,

Canton mill Principal Process Control Engineer, “all of the terminals are using the RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol), but there is a lot of versatility with noax terminals to use xterm, Linux, Citrix ICA, NX and many other protocols as well.”

“The noax touch panel computers with their highcontrast 1024 x 768 resolution touch screens give my crews the easy to read information they

ter.” Each pile has an eight-digit location code.

The computer directs the driver to the targeted pile. The loads of scrap that go into the furnace in the plant comprise a heat, and their goal, explains Jeff, “is to make the least cost recipe to put into a heat.” This all takes considerable coordination to be cost effective. Jeff notes “we were able to design the system to project the next 17 heats at a time based on customer orders. Since 80,000 to 100,000 lbs of steel from the previous heat remain behind in the furnace, we have the ability to take into account the projected chemistry for the next heat.”

Built to abide

A noax touch panel ThinClient shock mounted in a 61-ton capacity dump truck

need,” says Jeff. “Everything else I looked at fell short at a screen resolution of only 800 x 600, plus the noax PCs offer brightness control for our variety of lighting situations.”

Simplifying a complex operation Each truck hauls a 120,000 lb load of scrap. Up in the cab, truck driver Bob Chatman points out “the screen clearly shows you the layers of scrap in the load, the weights as the truck is loaded and your gross weight when you are ready to roll.

You never lose contact with the main compu-

The noax computers are shock mounted in the truck cabs to withstand the rough ride in the yard. Operating in extreme temperatures that include not only winter cold and summer heat but the constant high temperatures in the mill, the completely enclosed computer dissipates heat to the environment over a specially designed heat sink. The IP65 (NEMA 4) computer design prevents dirt or moisture from entering the unit and damaging the electronic components. Moreover, Jeff appreciates that he is using noax thin client PCs. “Computer operation all takes place on a 128 MB compact flash card. Not only does this mean I can run my application with just a small amount of memory, but with compact flash media, I don’t have to worry about potential data loss due to shocks and vibrations.” The trucks replace the four train tracks that once delivered scrap from the yard to feed the mill. In 2007 Timken tore up the tracks and put a fleet of four trucks into service to give the operation a level of versatility that leads to more effective use of furnace time in the mill. Activity on the

In today’s world of steel making, the profit margins are as thin as sheet metal.

That makes the margin of error at the Timken Faircrest plant in Canton, OH even thinner for the utilization of time, equipment and raw material. All must be coordinated across a site covering dozens of acres. Up in a crane or out in the yard, 18 noax thin client industrial computers efficiently and economically enable crews to coordinate the operations of this vast facility.

Simlplifying the steel-making process

train tracks used to be controlled from a console in a glassed-in office known as the pulpit, positioned four stories above the mill entrance.

The functions of the console have been replaced by a desktop computer, which communicates with the waterproof noax computers in the trucks, the cranes and at other points along the process. All of these units ultimately talk to the system server in the computer room. Along with the expansive scrap yard, the mill operation is a cavernous 21 acres under roof. “What’s cool,” says Jeff, “is that the noax PCs let the truck drivers see what the crane operators and the main computer see at the same time.” In the mill the scrap is transferred from the trucks into buckets, which are loaded into the electric arc furnace. A massive arc between three giant 26” diameter electrodes heats the scrap to 3,000 °F. In a loud light show of flames leaping up a hundred feet in the air, the scrap becomes a 340,000 lb heat of molten steel.

Rugged noax computer replaces steno pad – and human error After the steel is analyzed and refined to customer specifications, the ladle is then brought to the Ingot Making Facility, also known as Bottom Pour. The heat is teemed – poured through a trumpet – into four clusters of six ingots. Each of the 24 ingots is 28” square by 7’ tall, weighing up to 15,000 lbs. The pour is controlled up in the teeming crane by an operator working off of information provided by a noax C15 terminal.

Complicating the calculations, an estimate of how much steel is in the ladle is computed based on how the prevoius heat poured. During the pour the noax computer tracks how much weight is going into the ingot molds and enables the operator to avoid pouring the ladle’s slag by-

product into the molds to protect ingot quality.

Jeff Thompson, the teeming crane operator, relates that calculations were previously done during the pour on a steno pad. The computer now takes the worry of human error out of the operation. The responsive touch screen allows Thompson to accurately tap in information, even with gloves. After the ingot solidification time is reached, the molds are pulled from the teeming area and brought down to the mold stripping area. From one of three cranes, the operator begins to strip the molds by placing them into eggcrate cars pulled by a locomotive. Up in the crane cab the operator logs the stripping times on a noax mobile computer.

Total control of the process Another locomotive pulls two ingot clusters to the Soaking Pit area. Each cluster is reheated to bring the ingots up to a rolling temperature of 2,250 °F. Up to 198 ingots are in the pits, each poured according to exacting customer specifications. Soaking times over six hours span shift changes. Pulling the right ingot out of the pit can be a challenge for the operation. The noax C15s in the two soaking pit cranes enable the operators to determine which ingots are in which pits.

With each ingot reliably identified, the very hot piece of metal is conveyed into the rolling mill where it is formed into bars and then shipped off to the customer. “The beauty of this system,” says Jeff Yackley, “is that we are saving millions in scrap costs because we are not limited by what we bring onto the route at any one time. To make this system work well we need the rugged noax PCs to communicate with the trucks and cranes in this demanding environment. No other plant in the country has this kind of system.”

The steel is poured into 15 ,000 lb . ingots controlled up in the crane by an operator working with a noax IPC

The Timken Company

Specifications and Application

Overview of Components

Kurzprofil:

Ziele:

Hardware:

Since 1899 The Timken Company has been known world-wide as a leading manufacturer of roller bearings. The winning car at the first Indianapolis 500 in 1911 rode on Timken bearings. Today, long-running Timken bearings range in weight from a mere half ounce to nine tons and are used in products from precise computers to massive locomotives. The steel for these bearings and for an international list of industrial and automotive customers is produced at their Canton, OH Faircrest steel mill, part of the $1.56 billion worth of steel made by Timken plants in 2007 worldwide.

Their huge plant is truly involved in recycling, strictly using ferrous scrap to manufacture alloy and specialty steel that becomes steel bar and tubing. Where no steel exists; that will do the job, Timken technicians work with customers to develop new steels with the precise metallurgy and specific properties the application demands.

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Real time communications and data collection over vast distances at numerous points in the process

-- Industrial PC Compact C12 and C15

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Precise control over operations for product quality

-- Input: particularly robust touch panels

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Ability to control the cost of production and avoid costly errors

-- Protection class IP65

For more information please visit: www.timken.com

-- In-house developed noax All-in-one motherboard -- Bright, high-contrast TFT display -- Completely sealed, without external fan

IPC Requirements:

Software:

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Reliable communications in a harsh, demanding environment that includes extreme temperatures, high humidity, shock and vibration

-- Operating system: Microsoft Windows Server 2003 communicating over a wireless and cellular network

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High level of reliability to eliminate guesswork and human error

-- Application programs: Developed in house by Timken

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High-contrast display, readable under poor light conditions

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Integrated, resistive touch panels to ensure simple and reliable operation even with thick gloves

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Protection of components against dirt and moisture

© noax Technologies Case Study arranged 2014

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