Michael Mueller Thrashin’ Out

Well, this was a few years ago, but always worth another look. Innovative-IDM‘s Dallas customer service manager, in a former life.

Buzz Flies West for the Holidays

Buzz wanted to go somewhere warm for the holidays, so he tagged along with Innovative-IDM‘s accounting wiz Katy Shields on her vacation to sunny California.  His favorite part was the trip to Disneyland – check out the picture from Space Mountain!

Dressing for Success at Innovative-IDM

Yesterday marked the first Executive Wednesday here at the Innovative-IDM Dallas office.  On most days the dress code is business casual, but yesterday we stepped it up a notch with suits and ties.  Looking good guys and gals!

Clean Suit at Texas Instruments, Home of Jack Kilby

Jeff Rodgers was visiting our friends over at Texas Instruments today — the very site where Jack Kilby invented the integrated circuit — and had to dress the part.

Bad Luck on Friday the 13th Means Good Luck for Your Industrial Electronics Repairs

The Friday is Friday the 13th. You think you got bad luck dealing with industrial electronic repairs? Your luck JUST CHANGED.

One again, we are running a Friday the 13th Bad Luck Stimulus Package on electronic component repairs through Jan 13. The first Lucky 7 customers who call us at 800.237.3278 to book a repair will receive a giant — and we mean ginormous — BAD LUCK BLACK golf umbrella to keep the sky from falling on their heads.

We fix broken servos, overheated AC or DC drives, fried circuit boards, and fritzed touch screens. You can even look up the price of the repair online before you send in the part.

Stop what you’re doing. Pick up the phone (or email info@iacorp.com) and schedule a free pickup. There is no evaluation charge. 800.237.3278

Honduras Trip for Innovative-IDM’s IT Director Spells Help for Less Fortunate

Our IT Director will have no email, no cell phone and no communication for a week. It’s not because we are “down” here at Innovative-IDM; it’s because Ken Skillett will be in Honduras on a humanitarian mission trip. Ken will be helping build housing for those who have none. We are hoping Buzz will make the trip with Ken. Circle marks the spot where Ken will go.

For those interested in such things, the capital city of Tegucigalpa is at 14 degrees north latitude and 87 degrees west longitude (about in line with Birmingham, Alabama). Ken’s willingness to take time away from family and work to help those less fortunate is yet another example of the type of legendary employees we are lucky to have at Innovative-IDM.

Application Note: Going From DC Motors to a Synchronized System of AC Motors and Drives

by Kat Trick, Applications Engineer, Innovative-IDM

Overview:  At one company, there is what they call a brine box. There is a saltwater tank setup that slows an electric motor saw. Within this setup, they use three DC motors. They decided they would like to change the DC motors to AC motors. In addition to changing from DC to AC, they would like to implement speed control between the motors including the ability to decelerate the motors at the same time, and at the same rate.

The Solution: We selected the AC motors to match the required speed and torque needed for the application. This information was obtained by analyzing the load conditions and from the specifications at which the DC motors were running the application. For speed control, the simple solution was to daisy chain Yaskawa drives. This allowed the drives to communicate with each other, as well as synchronize their deceleration.

The Results:  The AC motors can be rated to give the same performance, or higher performance, as the DC motors.The AC drives can provide for controlled acceleration and deceleration rates. Connection between the drives allows for the synchronization of the acceleration and deceleration rates.The Yaskawa drives have the ability for the parameter setting to be extracted. This would make programming the drives to be easier by setting the parameters in one, and just copying the parameters from that one to the other two.

Merry Christmas from Innovative-IDM

Man are we lucky…all these greeting cards from our friends, customers and vendors; a great year of growth for our company and our employees; tons of new customers to serve. We at Innovative-IDM have been blessed. Like Brianna at our front desk exclaimed earlier today, “Merry Christmas!”

Customer Testimonial: Another Happy Customer

Well, it happened again. Another written testimonial from a customer complimenting one of our customer service staff: this time, Cyrus Jahani. Read for yourself why Innovative-IDM is the home of LEGENDARY customer service.

Jeff,

As you know we are in the process of building several machines at [our company].  As we are new to this process there are always items that are missed on the original BOM.  I can not even begin to explain how much Cyrus has meant to our success.  He sends emails to me before 8am, is always there late and never makes any mistakes.  I am always 100% confident that I can take what he tells me to the bank.  As you know I am kind of a jerk and mainly only work with vendors that give me a quick and precise response, so Cyrus fits my needs/wants very well.

If you can pass my appreciation onto Cyrus Jahani’s manager I would greatly appreciate it.

Andy

Hydraulic Presses Improved With PLC and HMI

by Rami Hassouneh, Innovative-IDM Application Engineer

Overview:

A plastics manufacturer suffering from poor productivity, inefficiency and a large number of operator errors acquires an automated solution to alleviate the problem. Using a simple setup with an Omron PLC and Omron HMI, the manufacturer reduces wasted time and material and utilizes his hydraulic presses to their full potential.

The Challenge:

The process in question was a fully manual process. It consisted of an operator filling a mold with resin, setting the pressure, and activating the hydraulic press. The operator would wait for a given time as indicated in the “recipe”, then increase the pressure setting. The operator, again, would wait for a given time, and then disengage the hydraulic press. The mold is flipped over and the process repeated. The total time of production for one part could run from 30 minutes to 300 minutes depending on the resin composition and size of the finished product.

This type of process, while simple in nature, is actually inherently prone to productivity issues. The process relies completely on the operator to accurately set and control variables such as pressure and pressing time. Human error, and unfortunately a lack of care by the operator, was resulting in these variables being inaccurate and ultimately many parts were rendered useless. On a typical day the manufacturer had 10 presses running, and was losing 2 parts a day due to operator error, at an average of $175 per part.

The Solution:

Our solution was to automate the process by installing an Omron CP1H PLC and an Omron NS series Industrial Touch Screen HMI on each press. The operator from then on would only need to select the “recipe” from a user friendly menu on the HMI, and press start. The PLC from them on would control the process by starting the hydraulic press, setting the pressure required, and time to hold. It would alert the operator when the process was completed either to flip the part over, or to remove the product. It also would trigger an alarm if a mechanical failure had occurred in the press and the set pressure could not be achieved.

The total cost for setting up the system, allowing for programming, hardware, and installation was $130,000.

 

The Results:

The manufacturer eliminated the losses due to defective products coming out of the presses. While that alone would have covered the cost of the automated solution in approximately one year, and directly increased his revenue by $127,750/yr from then on, there were also added benefits that became apparent. Productivity was increased as now a visual alarm allowed the supervisor to quickly see when a press was sitting idle, and the situation corrected immediately. The solution provided also reduced the manpower required to run the ten presses from five operators to two.

Materials Used:

OMRON CP1H Series PLC with Ethernet Interface.

OMRON NS Series Industrial Touch Screen HMI, 8” with Ethernet Interface