TPi July 2018

Products & developments

Monitoring spiral tube production in real time Schuler aims to continuously opti- mise its spiral pipe plants to create a stable process flow, which offers high quality large pipes, low cost of operation and a high degree of automation for the end user. stations under work, the production time of single pipes and a fault report. An interface to the customer ERP network is integrated.

analysis is accelerated. With large pipes, product data acquisition is of particular importance when it comes to inspecting the high grade steel pipes (X100) in accordance with the API 5L standard regarding dimension or welding quality by means of ultrasonics, hydrostatic testing and X-rays. Schuler upgraded the analogue X-ray system to a digital version so it can be easily integrated into Pipe ID 4.0. It includes a server station that stores the results of these tests as well as all of the other machine parameters. With network label printers or paint marking and barcode scanners, all of the pipes in the plant can be traced and tracked, and their quality – regarding close tolerances – guaranteed. Even the coil storage area is managed in the database, which means that the coil data is assigned to the produced pipe. Mobile devices like tablets or smartphones can also be used for monitoring and evaluation. The server station forms the backbone for the fibre optical network every machine is connected to by managed industrial switches. This enables an overview of the workflow process including a quick status of the single machines and the overall picture of the

Up to 50 operator terminals all over the plant grant access to information about the actual working time, the number of pipes per time unit, the production rates, the status of the plant and error messages of the working stations, like the offline welding station, the hydro- static testing machine, the cross seam welding and repair stand, the inspection stand or the pipe end bevelling machine. This reduces operation effort as well as costs for maintenance and repair. Additionally, with its new robots for tab plate welding and cutting, final pipe measuring, grinding and pipe stencilling, Schuler developed a fully automatic system, which can be used for both pipe ends. The minimum cycle time for diameters ranging from 20 to 88" is approximately five minutes. Short coil and diameter changing times, high flexibility and low downtimes further increase the degree of automation that Schuler’s spiral pipe plants provide.

These aims are also true for the company’s latest innovation called Pipe ID 4.0 – a comprehensive process control system for the manufacturing of large pipes in real time featuring a track and trace system, overall equipment efficiency (OEE) monitoring, condition monitoring, smart diagnostics and power monitoring. Schuler has already implemented machine monitoring in other production lines – for the manufacturing of railway wheels. The production data acquired includes all planned and unplanned downtimes including their causes, fault messages, target/actual production and the quality of the parts. In this way, the system operator gains a basis for calculating the OEE. Permanent logging of parameters also enables a cycle-accurate response in real time, where necessary. Condition monitoring allows checking of the system at regular intervals for damage and wear, and thanks to smart diagnostics, fault

Schuler AG – Germany www.schulergroup.com

Schuler’s Pipe ID 4.0 is a comprehensive process control system for the manufacturing of large pipes in real time

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TUBE PRODUCTS INTERNATIONAL July 2018

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