Wavin Plastics Ltd, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of industrial plastic products has reduced its maintenance costs and increased output on its extruders for plastic water and gas pipes with the help of AC motors and drives from ABB.
Wavin Plastics Ltd turned to ABB, which provided the solution through ABB Drives Alliance member and Motor Service partner Slater Drives Systems.
Adrian Scobie of Slater Drive Systems comments: “An upgrade was needed in order to reduce maintenance costs and increase production output. The existing DC drives were more than twenty years old and had come to the end of their life. As the original manufacturer had ceased trading, replacement parts were very difficult to source and in most cases obsolete.”
“We supplied two ABB AC motor and drives systems, ranging from 55kW to 200 kW and installed them to run extruders in the polyethylene and PVC halls. A general machinery drive was also installed in the polythene extrusion hall as part of a reliability improvement programme for Wavin Plastics Ltd. The motors used were all in the highest European efficiency class, Eff1 and as such will have a significant impact on overall running costs.”
The ABB motors and drives control the extrusion process used to make plastic pipes. Extrusion is a transfer of energy from the motor to the cooler plastic, thus converting it from solid to a melt. The basic method for extrusion is simple – a screw turns in a barrel and pushes the plastic forward. The screw speed is changed by modifying the motor speed.
The process works with raw materials fed from storage by the material feed screws, which feeds the material down to the extruder. The plastic is melted, as it is pushed through the extruder and pressed through a die and mandrel which produces the pipe profile.
Ian Bowes of Wavin Plastics Ltd explains why ABB equipment was chosen: “We had wanted to upgrade all the systems for some time and took the opportunity to try AC drives against DC drives. We chose ABB, as they are a forefront name, well known for quality and leading edge technology. ABB is a name associated with being one of the leaders and we were happy to use them. With the new motors and drives we now have less maintenance, increased production and are also confident that the equipment will provide long term reliability and energy savings.”