This story comes to us courtesy of Mark Trent, our Manager of Value Added Sales:

Background information

Our customer, RBT, asked us to develop a radio remote control system for one of their four-wheel drive and four-wheel steer conveyors. Until now, these conveyors were operated by hand. Our sales person did not want to change many hydraulic components so he switched the valve to the proportional version of the venerated V20 series. He spoke to Kar-Tech to see if they could do the whole control system of 15 proportional and 18 on/off functions. Kar-Tech learned that the 15 proportional outputs needed to be current regulated, and called our Manager of Value Added Sales to see if we could do regulation with any of our programmable control systems. We confirmed this was possible, and decided the best system to offer RBT would be a Kar-Tech radio control with a J1939 capable receiver and a programmable ECU from Scott Industrial. RBT’s customer then purchased a prototype.

Project design and programming

Scott’s mobile controls programming team reviewed the input and output requirements and decided to use two Hydraforce ECU-2415 controllers. One for the digital (on/off) functions and one for the proportional outputs. Grouping the outputs allowed us to plan the use of one software service tool to tune and trouble shoot the proportional functions in the hydraulic system. Each proportional coil can have the Imax, Imin, ramp up, and ramp down set via the service tool. In addition to the coils a Creep Mode percent, that controls maximum speed when finely adjusting conveyor location was added to the service tool. The service tool can set 63 different parameters.

The result

RBT’s customer came in several weeks after installation to see the machine operate. They were very pleased with the results of this project. RBT taped the video embedded above of the machine in motion to demonstrate the capabilities of this technology.

Founded in 1948, Scott has grown as experts in fluid power. We offer design and assembly services as well as training to help customers maintain optimal equipment performance. To learn more about Scott Industrial Systems’ capabilities visit http://www.scottindustrialsystems.com/. To discuss our efficient and collaborative approach to your project, call 937-233-8146 or e-mail us at sales@scottindustrial.com. For more information on RBT’s conveying systems visit http://www.rbtsi.com/index.asp.