Metal industry production processes are optimized with Altus technology

The wide diversity of communication modules available in the Nexto Series products gives our advanced family of programmable controllers the possibility to meet the demands of the international industry. With advanced features such as hot swapping,  I/O modules expansion and scalar architecture based on deterministic Ethernet, the series equipment can be used both in machines and in distributed systems. Recently, this adaptability and the ability to act in different processes led Nexto technology to be used as a central part in the upgrade of one of the production plants of a metal industry multinational company.

Present in more than 60 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas, this company is a leader in the main steel markets, including the construction, automotive, appliance and packaging segments, in addition to the Research & Development areas for new technologies. In order to strengthen its presence in the South American metal market, the company sought technologies that could guarantee the quality of its products and enhance the capacity of its wire fabrication unit. In this project, Altus equipment was used to retrofit the multi-pass wire drawing machine with winder and in the five baking ovens used in the production process of wires sold in the annealed wire market.

The CPU chosen to optimize both the wire drawing machine and the baking ovens was the NX3005 model, a unit with an embedded power supply, high processing speed - 1000 Boolean instructions (contacts) every 6 microseconds - and wide data storage capability. In addition to these features that ensure its high performance, the Nexto Series CPU also has support for WebServer, a free tool that allows the creation of screens for supervision and monitoring applications. With the feature, which is already embedded in the unit, there is no need to invest in the acquisition and implementation of a SCADA system, which adds even more agility and economy to the development of the application.

The complete automation of the new plant control system uses six CPUs, a MODBUS/TCP NX5100 remote and a set of modules which total more than 2300 I/O points to control the machine and the five baking ovens. The architecture also features a media converter and a seven-inch X2-BASE series HMI.