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Operational Improvements
December 11, 2024
In 2014 Amsted Rail, a leading manufacturer of railroad car components and systems in Petersburg, Virginia, realized their existing chip conveyors were falling apart. The conveyors were handling chips from the turning of large steel parts. The conveyors were constantly jamming up from having bushy stringers not being conveyed out of the current units and from what Mark Vieira, machining process engineer observed, the maintenance technicians were using a pipe wrench on the motor shaft to force the conveyor past the jam. These old conveyors were also attached to the machine above the coolant tank which allowed a lot of chips and debris to fall into the coolant tank.
“We normally run twenty-four/seven, so the coolant tank would fill with chips and have to be cleaned every three months,” Vieira said.
Vieira attended the IMTS show in Chicago where he visited Jorgensen Conveyors booth. In their booth he learned about Jorgensen’s Munchman II Chip Conveyor. They showed Mark the workings of the conveyor system and how it would help with the issues the company was having. The Munchman II employs a unique dual belt conveyor arrangement that reduces or even eliminates material conveyance and conveyor jamming problems. It’s ideally suited to turning and milling operations where long stringy and heavy chip volumes are generated. He contacted a Jorgensen sales representative and started the process of putting the Munchman II chip conveyor into all their Murata twin spindle turning centers.
“Jorgensen Conveyors designs custom solutions to meet the needs of our customers,” said Co-Principal John D’Amico, “With any new order, our skilled engineers create designs using SolidWorks that will successfully solve your application need. We have a state of the art 100,000 square foot manufacturing facility and we maintain ISO 9001 certification.”
For Amsted Rail, Jorgensen Conveyors designed the coolant tank and chip conveyors for the Murata MW400 and MW200 machines, with the chip conveyor sitting down into the coolant tank to allow better chip carry out.
“We would lose 96 hours of production per machine each year to clean our coolant tanks during regular working hours. We reduced our coolant tank cleaning from once every three months, to once a year. We are able to clean our coolant tanks during our normal shutdown weeks, so we do not lose any production time for coolant tank cleaning. Only having to clean the tanks once a year means we have also reduced our coolant tank hazardous waste removal by 75%," Vieira said.
The Jorgensen chip conveyors also came equipped with a Jam Manager control. "What this control does for us is, if something falls into the conveyor, or if the quantity of bushy chips that are in the conveyor jams the conveyor, the conveyor will automatically back up and go forward again three times to try and clear the jam, before stopping," Vieira said.
"We then clear the jam manually. This saves our conveyors from being damaged because of forcing the conveyor to pass the jam through. This along with regular maintenance should afford us a much longer chip conveyor life. Our old chip conveyors lasted three years. Our new Jorgensen chip conveyors have been in place for two years and are still performing very well," Vieira added.
(www.amstedrail.com) (www.jorgenconveyors.com)
“We normally run twenty-four/seven, so the coolant tank would fill with chips and have to be cleaned every three months,” Vieira said.
Vieira attended the IMTS show in Chicago where he visited Jorgensen Conveyors booth. In their booth he learned about Jorgensen’s Munchman II Chip Conveyor. They showed Mark the workings of the conveyor system and how it would help with the issues the company was having. The Munchman II employs a unique dual belt conveyor arrangement that reduces or even eliminates material conveyance and conveyor jamming problems. It’s ideally suited to turning and milling operations where long stringy and heavy chip volumes are generated. He contacted a Jorgensen sales representative and started the process of putting the Munchman II chip conveyor into all their Murata twin spindle turning centers.
“Jorgensen Conveyors designs custom solutions to meet the needs of our customers,” said Co-Principal John D’Amico, “With any new order, our skilled engineers create designs using SolidWorks that will successfully solve your application need. We have a state of the art 100,000 square foot manufacturing facility and we maintain ISO 9001 certification.”
For Amsted Rail, Jorgensen Conveyors designed the coolant tank and chip conveyors for the Murata MW400 and MW200 machines, with the chip conveyor sitting down into the coolant tank to allow better chip carry out.
“We would lose 96 hours of production per machine each year to clean our coolant tanks during regular working hours. We reduced our coolant tank cleaning from once every three months, to once a year. We are able to clean our coolant tanks during our normal shutdown weeks, so we do not lose any production time for coolant tank cleaning. Only having to clean the tanks once a year means we have also reduced our coolant tank hazardous waste removal by 75%," Vieira said.
The Jorgensen chip conveyors also came equipped with a Jam Manager control. "What this control does for us is, if something falls into the conveyor, or if the quantity of bushy chips that are in the conveyor jams the conveyor, the conveyor will automatically back up and go forward again three times to try and clear the jam, before stopping," Vieira said.
"We then clear the jam manually. This saves our conveyors from being damaged because of forcing the conveyor to pass the jam through. This along with regular maintenance should afford us a much longer chip conveyor life. Our old chip conveyors lasted three years. Our new Jorgensen chip conveyors have been in place for two years and are still performing very well," Vieira added.
(www.amstedrail.com) (www.jorgenconveyors.com)
