Retrofit em estampadeira de bolachas de mel

Abstract

The Brazilian industrial park needs investment and has very old and obsolete machines. In a country where entrepreneurs are struggling financially for new investments, retrofitting old machines becomes a very attractive option for productivity improvement. This paper deals with the retrofit of a honey cookie stamping machine. The machine belongs to a small company and was built in 1999, but it was still in operation at the beginning of this study. Prior to retrofit the machine had some technical limitations. The machine’s production capacity was at its limit and no capacity increase was possible through adjustments. Some pneumatic and electrical components were already obsolete. The machine was not programmable which made it very difficult to insert new products. A quality problem due to the sudden movements of the rotary pneumatic actuators also occurred during the process. During the retrofit the old command via relay logic was replaced by a PLC. In addition, to improve equipment efficiency, pneumatic cylinder drives have been replaced by servomotors. Retrofit is expected to improve production capacity by 5%, eliminate the quality problem and replace all obsolete components avoiding long unplanned downtime.