CompositesWorld

MAR 2018

CompositesWorld

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TRENDS MARCH 2018 22 CompositesWorld When structural engineer Sean Minogue was charged with updating shop floor processes at Sea Ray Boats' (Knoxville, TN, US) multiple facilities, he was asked to focus on saving weight and cost, yet achieve higher tolerances during builds. Minogue began by replacing the old ways Sea Ray tracked fiberglass consumption (monitoring the revolu- tions of a wheel around which the fiberglass filaments were wound) and resin consumption (basing calculations on a stroke counter linked to a pneumatic pump). He wanted a system, instead, that could track resin, chop, and other material usage by part, and monitor usage in real time to enable comparison to requirements. In addition, the system would record labor hours, cure cycle data, takt time (average time between the start of production of one unit and the start of production of the next), historical weight data, and most of all, provide real time data to the operators. To accomplish this, Minogue and Sea Ray developed a material monitoring system (MMS) with the help of HBM (Darmstadt, Germany), known for its sensors, instruments and software for data acquisition and process control. The PMX signal conditioning system from HBM, a data acquisition system intended for the Internet of Things (IoT), measures and monitors myriad tasks and machines via industrial Ethernet interfaces, and collects and stores the data for quality control. During a recently concluded, year- long beta test on the Sea Ray yacht production line in Merritt Island, FL, US, the PMX system was linked to load cells and a high-accuracy scale, to measure the weights of pallets that hold the fiberglass spools, and to a flow transmitter connected to a flow meter that controls the amount of resin going to each of two chop- per guns. The MMS then provided Industry 4.0 comes to boatbuilding MARINE Source | Sea Ray Boats

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