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| Simatic Industrie PCs | | Industrial PCs provide trouble-free data traffic | When Ewert Ahrensburg Electronic delivers complete systems for daily newspaper production, Siemens industrial PCs are also involved. They are compact, robust and fast and available in different versions so that the right PC can always be used in the right place.
Rotation machines for printing daily papers have always been a source of technical fascination: their speed (11.5 m/s) and the perfection with which they produce fully-folded newspapers is astonishing. Depending on the size of the system, up to one million newspapers per hour run off the offset rotation machines - in one or several colors, ready folded, fully automatically and coordinated by Simatic Box and Rack PC.
All controlled by data traffic
Of course the printing preparation, the printing itself and the printing post-processing are all controlled today by data processing. And this is the speciality of the Ewert Ahrensburg Electronic GmbH (EAE) which has been supplying solutions for the entire newspaper production workflow for more than 40 years, and with 650 employees. This means that EAE supports all processes from the advertisement up to delivery of the newspaper.
For instance, EAE controls the whole publishing management in the pre-press section such as page planning system, make-up system, and whole page montage, and integrates all conventional subsystems (editing systems, advertisement systems etc.) in the digital workflow. The printing die manufacture is also controlled in further preliminary management. The rotation management includes the modules production planning, ink presetting, machine control, and roller logistics. The dispatch room management covers control and visualization of all production steps in the so-called "mailroom". As a new product, EAE offers an interdepartmental job planning system with tracking and reporting components.
Systems are now being delivered to all five continents from the company headquarters near Hamburg.
To suit all applications
Siemens supplies the right industrial PCs for this environment. The most important requirements for the industrial PCs in a newspaper press are robustness, long life, speed and openness regarding software. The Simatic Box PCs are highly efficient and, thanks to their compact and robust design, ideal for installing in machines, switch cabinets and control panels.
The service-friendly assembly makes all components easily accessible. In addition, efficient remote monitoring is provided by numerous alarm and logging functions, as well as the possibility of transferring messages by SMS. Siemens does not only configure standard 19" devices for EAE. They also assemble special systems with their own and OEM components which EAE then equips with software. In this way the end user gets a tailor-made system.
A wide variety of tasks for the Simatic PCs
The double width newspaper machines with double cylinder circumference (4/2 machines) still dominate the newspaper market. Up to eight offset plates can be clamped to the cylinder, four in width and two in circumference. This means up to 16 pages can be printed in four colors in one printing column. One section normally consists of at least two printing columns (32 pages) and a folding machine. Up to 10 sections, i.e. 20 printing columns, are possible.
Coordination of the individual sections is controlled by a high-performance Simatic Rack PC840 in 19 inch format as an SKS computer. To make sure that no information is lost at these speeds and that any events can be responded to in a matter of microseconds, the PC 840 is equipped with the RMOS real-time operating system. To enable the individual sections to exchange data, every system has a Net PC (also a Simatic PC 840 which takes over the tasks of the data router. This is equipped with EAE's own network cards right down to the last slot. Another function of the Net PC is to transfer the data from the individual sections to the appropriate control stands. A special feature in comparison with the industrial PC is the use of a flash disk in place of the conventional rotary mass memory.
right up to the control stand
The heart of a control stand is a Simatic Box PC 840 which runs under Windows 2000. Since it can get very hot in these enclosed control panels - above 40°C in some places - the computer has a cooling system which guarantees permanent operation even in 24 hour shifts. The Box PC 840 picks up the current production data, for example speed, circulation and machine status and displays them in the user-friendly EAE masks. Functions such as color settings, machine monitoring and web tension can be requested in other masks.
The individual programs of the fully automatic oxy-dry rubber cloth washing machine can also be called here and started according to the production requirements. The EAE product MaFlow represents another example of the high degree of automation, in that it manages the fully automatic roll transport, including spare roll administration: paper rolls weighing tons are transported to the respective roll carriers where the paper is needed, as if by magic.
Another Rack PC 840 is used as an info computer on the control stand. It saves all data relevant to the production and general process, and displays them at a suitable place. Finally, every system has a Service-PC from the same series, in order to make it possible to set all settings during commissioning or maintenance. |  |
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