Smartwire delivers water to depend on

Cutting, grinding, sawing, drilling – modern glass processing machines, fitted with diamond tools, can carry out all of these tasks and more besides. However, during operation, they require large amounts of clean water for rinsing and cooling the glass. In fact, the largest machines produced by German flat glass processing expert, Glastechnik Holger Kramp, need 3000 litres of pure water per minute.

Taking such a large amount of water direct from the mains would not only be costly but also environmentally unsound, so Glastechnik Holger Kramp equips its machines with sophisticated water treatment systems. These take the contaminated water produced during glass processing, which typically contains as much as 200 grams of sludge per litre, and purify it so that it can be re-used.

The process used for treating the water involves pumping it through specially shaped vessels, adding a flocculating agent to help the sludge form into clumps, and finally separation of the waste material by gravity. Up to a dozen pumps, including duplicate redundant units and those needed to circulate the water to the glass-processing machine itself, are used.

To control the machine’s many pumps and valves, the engineers at Glastechnik Holger Kramp wanted a control system that was versatile, so that it could be easily configured to suit different machine options, cost-effective, and very dependable. For the motor starting, they chose Moeller Electric xStart starters with integrated motor protection circuit breakers.

These units are compact, competitively priced and well proven in the field, but they also have another advantage that was very important to Glastechnik Holger Kramp – they are fully compatible with the new Moeller Electric SmartWire panel wiring system.

SmartWire replaces the cumbersome and bulky wiring between the motor starters and other key control system elements, such as variable speed drives, and the panel’s main controller which, in this case, is a rugged Moeller Electric easy800 intelligent relay.

With the SmartWire system, the starters are simply fitted with adapters, in the same way that an ordinary auxiliary contact block would be fitted, and then the control wiring is completed with pre-assembled plug-in leads. The SmartWire connections allow the contactors to be operated by the controller, and also provide feedback signalling whether the contactor is open or closed, and the trip status of the motor protection circuit breaker.

Although the starters needed for the 56kW pumps used in the largest versions of the glass processing machines cannot be directly fitted with SmartWire modules, this presents no difficulty as the SmartWire range also includes I/O modules with four inputs and two outputs. These can readily be used to provide SmartWire connections for starters of any size.

The power connections for the all of the starters in the panel are implemented using standardised commoning links from the Moeller Electric range.

“Not only does the SmartWire system greatly reduce the time taken to wire the panel,” said Michael Kramp of Glastechnik Holger Kramp, “ it also saves even more time during testing and commissioning since, with the plug-in arrangement, it’s virtually impossible to make wiring mistakes. In addition, setting up the SmartWire system is as easy as pressing a button – the device addresses are assigned automatically.”

“These cost-saving benefits allow us to keep the price of our machines very competitive,” he continued, “even though key elements in the control panels, including starters and drives, are duplicated to ensure maximum reliability.”

The easy800 relay used by Glastechnik Holger Kramp to complement the SmartWire system is an ideal choice for this application. It supports SmartWire directly, it has the capacity to handle 300 I/O points and it is very easy to program. These features mean that it can readily be configured to suit all of the company’s existing products, and that it has ample spare capacity to cope with future developments.

To provide the glass-processing machine with a convenient and intuitive user interface, the engineers from Glastechnik Holger Kramp selected another innovative product from the Moeller Electric easy range – the MFD-Titan easyHMI unit. This inexpensive and compact IP65 unit has a backlit 132 x 64 pixel graphics-capable display, plus nine operating buttons, the functions of which can be customised to suit the user’s requirements. Programming and display design for the MFD-Titan is carried out quickly and easily using the easySoft-Pro software package.

“We jealously guard the excellent reputation of our products for quality and performance,” said Michael Kramp, “and that means we need innovative high-end control technology as offered by Moeller Electric’s easy products and SmartWire system. This advanced technology cuts our costs, while giving us the versatility we need to meet our customers’ exact requirements.”

Moeller Electric’s SmartWire system, which is at the heart of this glass-processing machine application, is part of the company’s Darwin Technology initiative. This marks a fundamental shift in the way that control panels are wired, by providing a convenient bridge between the world of automation and the realm of power switching devices. Ultimately, Darwin Technology will cover the whole Moeller Electric product portfolio for control panels.